


Where Wind and Water Meet

by Firefly_Ca



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, At the Back of the North Wind, Deaf Character, I Don't Even Know, Inspired by Novel, M/M, Magical Realism, Supernatural Elements, hearing loss, kblreversebang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 12:29:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/698247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firefly_Ca/pseuds/Firefly_Ca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for last year's Kurt/Blaine Reverse Bang. I thought I should stop dragging my heels and finally add it here.</p><p>Inspired by/loosely based on George MacDonald's At The Back of the North Wind. Blaine has never behaved the way normal children do and has always been too quiet and detached from the world around him. Everything changes the day he meets a strange boy named Kurt with the ability to change his appearance and who says he can control the wind. Blaine doesn't know why, but it feels like he's known Kurt forever. AU, but not totally detached from the Glee universe. Maybe kind of a death fic, but hopefully not one that will make you blink at a blank wall as your feels huddle up in the corner and cry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> All art in the story by the lovely [Peachfaerie](http://peachfaerie.tumblr.com).
> 
> Thanks as always to my betas [MomentsOfWeakness](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MomentsOfWeakness/pseuds/MomentsOfWeakness) and [loonylevicorpus](http://acklesbooty.tumblr.com) for not running away screaming when I asked them, "Haha so what do you guys think about death fic?"
> 
> So this is the weirdest thing I've ever written. Why write death fic when I can hardly read it myself? Based on an obscure Victorian children's fantasy novel about 13 other people have read? My only defense is that peachfaerie's picture jumped out at me the second I saw it and made me go, "OMG just like it came out of the pages of [that story about the kid who's BFFs with the wind](http://librivox.org/at-the-back-of-the-north-wind-by-george-macdonald/) and makes me cry _so hard_." However, like I said, I have death fic issues at the best of times, so don't expect this story to be all about the sad ending. If I pulled this off at all, expect a story that has an admittedly atypical happy ending, not unlike what Hans Christian Andersen was fond of (somewhat depressing and somewhere someone is in tears, but everyone gets what they need).

In many ways, Blaine Anderson never was quite right. As a baby he was always too quiet, too happy to lie still and watch the world around him with large eyes; never crying, never laughing. It worried his parents and they took him to doctor after doctor, certain there was something wrong, trying to test his hearing and intelligence, even before he learned how to talk. But nothing out of the ordinary was ever found. He just didn't fit. It bothered his older brother, too, even though Cooper pretended he didn't care. Some mornings his parents would find him curled up on the floor beside Blaine's crib, where he had fallen asleep, watching, making sure his silent brother didn't need anything in the night, trying to protect the little body that didn't seem interested in protecting itself. For years Blaine was the first person friends and family wanted to ask about when they caught up with the Andersons, and the last one they asked after. No one knew what could be done for him. And then, when Blaine was five, everything changed. When Blaine was five, he met Kurt.  
  
It happened one night during a terrible storm that was still raging after two whole days. It rattled the windows and screamed through the trees, and left Cooper shaking, although he'd never admit it. He'd never heard the wind sound so angry before, at times even thinking that the house was going to fall over. A crash, the sound of glass breaking from Blaine's room sent him running towards his brother. He knew that Blaine would never call out if he had gotten hurt, even though he had gotten so much better at talking lately. The wind had died down a little when Cooper reached Blaine at the same time as their parents, but it was still howling fiercely when they opened the door and saw him, sitting straight up in bed, looking at the window with a shocked expression.  
  
"Blaine, are you alright?" Cooper demanded anxiously.  
  
"That boy broke my window," Blaine spluttered, sounding more outraged and emotional than Cooper had ever heard.  
  
"What do you mean, sweetie?" Their mother asked, cautiously.  
  
"A boy grabbed that branch and pushed it through my window," Blaine spat out, as he pointed at the offending branch from the nearby tree that had indeed crashed through the window, sending shattered glass all through the room. Cooper felt his mother's hand on his shoulder, stopping him from walking any further in bare feet.  
  
"No one could throw a branch through your window, Blaine," Cooper said. "Not so you could see him do it. You're on the second floor. It was probably the wind, right Dad?"  
  
"No," Blaine insisted, his little face full of indignation. "It was the boy. He knocked on my window to come in and when I told him it was rude to come into a house through a window, he took the branch and he threw it. He ran away, and he is a  _bad boy_  and I never want to see him ever again."  
  
"I think you were dreaming, sport," their dad sounded cautious, probably because he'd never seen Blaine so excited before. "Sometimes your mind thinks you see something when you're tired, but it's not there at all. It was just your imagination. Now stay in your bed and don't put your feet down until we've found a way to clean this up."  
  
Blaine changed after that. Suddenly he fit in more with his family, more willing to interact with them, and Cooper didn't have to worry about him the same way that he used to. His eyes lit up more when people spoke to him, like he was finally able to recognize them as people. Sometimes he even laughed, and it was the nicest sound Cooper had ever heard, like a song that no one else has listened to before. He hardly ever laughed when other people tried to make him, though, and sometimes that made Cooper sad, because it meant that for as much as Blaine had improved, he still didn't really belong. When Blaine laughed, it was at the joke that no one else heard, or the wonderful moment everyone else always just missed seeing out of the corner of their eye. It was like there were things hidden in the air only he saw, his eyes shining and some unknown joy suddenly spilling out of him. Still, Cooper was always tried to be glad that Blaine was happy at all, that he stopped acting like a picture to be looked at and held, but only an imitation of something real. At least his brother wasn't just watching everyone else live anymore, which was all Cooper ever wanted. He soon forgot all about the strange boy Blaine claimed broke through his window in a fit of anger. Blaine never forgot. The boy never went away.


	2. Chapter 1

Sometimes Blaine notices things when he's not supposed to. His mom tells him he's got his head in the clouds with a smile on her face, when Blaine falls because he misses the top stair to the basement  _again_ , but he notices the worry hiding behind her eyes when she says it. He doesn't like knowing that she feels bad when she thinks about him or looks at him too hard, but Blaine can't  _make_  himself be more like Cooper, normal, like other boys, the way she wants him to be. He knows. He's tried, but nothing about the world he walks through feels real to him. He feels like he lives in the wrong place, like he's always fighting his way through water. Sometimes it's so hard understanding the point of the people around him, he forgets easy things, like what a birthday does or where the stairs start and end.  
  
Still, for as much as Blaine misses, he  _does_  notice. He noticed that first night, the way his father's face went tight when Blaine said a boy tried to break into the house. The tightness left as soon as everyone saw the branch, so Blaine lets his dad think the boy was all a dream, just until he has a chance to get used to the idea. One of the things he's noticed is that people get a lot less upset about new things once they've had a chance to stop being new. For him, the strange boy stops being new the very next night.  
  
The wind is still howling and shrieking outside the window, even louder now that the glass has gone, a sheet of heavy plastic taped in its place. Mom had wanted him to stay in Cooper's room for the night, but Cooper gets so grumpy for no reason when Blaine goes in there, Blaine usually feels better if he stays away completely. He's always missing something when he's in Cooper's room, so he asks to sleep in his own bed instead.  
  
By the time the wind has started to blow so fiercely that Blaine can hear the tape starting to rattle along with the plastic, making tearing, painful-sounding rasps as it does, he decides he's made a mistake. Maybe staying with Cooper wouldn't be so bad after all. He buries his head further under the covers. It feels like the house is going to shake down. After a while the rattling stops almost completely, even though Blaine is sure he can now hear the wind whipping around _inside_  the room. He tries not to make noise, but still cries out a little when someone taps very pointedly on his shoulder.  
  
"Well there's no need for  _that_ ," says a voice, high and strong and cold like the wind that's rushing past Blaine's ears as his blanket almost blows away from his head completely. "Stop crying. I can't be bothered talking to a crying boy."  
  
"It's so  _loud_ ," Blaine whimpers, trying to pull the covers tighter over his head.  
  
"Oh for the – " the voice begins. "It wouldn't  _have_  to be this loud if you weren't so un-cooperative."  
  
The wind picks up even louder, positively screaming, the noise crawling inside Blaine's head and throwing itself against his skull. The blanket is finally ripped out of his fingers as it flies to the far side of the room. Blaine cries out again and scrambles to cover his ears with his arms, but the shrieking wind dies down almost immediately, a faint breeze suddenly the only movement in the room.  
  
"That's better," says the voice, pausing for a moment before huffing, "Are you going to hide in plain sight the entire evening or are you going to talk to me?  _Get up_."  
  
Cautiously Blaine peeks out from underneath his arms. There's a boy standing next to the bed, not too much older than Cooper. He's looking at Blaine with his arms folded, and his mouth in a thin, displeased line. Blaine recognizes him immediately.  
  
"You're the boy who broke my window," he exclaims, springing up into a sitting position, forgetting to be afraid when he's so distracted by being angry.  
  
"I did no such thing," the boy snaps.  
  
"You did," Blaine insists. "I watched you do it."  
  
"I never broke your window," the boy says. " _You_  covered over  _mine_ , after I went through all the trouble of opening it. It took a lot of hard work for me to get that window the way that I like it, and then you went and had them cover it with plastic."  
  
"But that's my window," Blaine says, even more alarmed. "It's  _my_  window because it's a part of  _my_  house."  
  
"No," says the boy, talking in a voice that says he thinks Blaine is being very stupid. "The window is on  _my_  house, and you had no right to go covering it up."  
  
"But you don't live here," Blaine says. "And we're in  _my_  house right now."  
  
"Of course I don't  _live_  here," the boy says, pointing back out the window. "I live  _there_. That's  _my_  house and this window is the best view I have of outside, so stop taping it down, please."

 

Blaine is quiet for a moment before he finally stammers,  
  
"Your – your house is outside?"  
  
"My house is inside," says the boy. "And we  _are_  outside, right now."  
  
Blaine shakes his head.  
  
"No, no. We're  _in_  the house right now. We have to be, because there are walls and a ceiling. Out there with the trees and the sky,  _that's_  outside. My dad told me. He's old, so he knows."  
  
"The trees and sky  _are_  my walls and ceiling," says the boy. "And your dad isn't that old. He doesn’t know everything."  
  
"He's older than you," Blaine says, confidently. "He's even older than my brother."  
  
Cooper is always talking about how big and old and special he is. He talks about how he's going to go to middle school soon, and then even to McKinley, the big high school that they drive past every time they have to go to the dentist, but Blaine can't come with him because he's too short.   
  
"He is not," the boy says, still unimpressed. "I'm older than you, your father, your mother, and your brother all put together."  
  
"No you're not," Blaine says, who knows what a lie looks like. "I can prove it. How many years old are you?"  
  
The boy looks at him, surprised, like he's only just sorting something out about Blaine. "I'm older than counting, Blaine. I'm older than numbers."  
  
"You can't be," Blaine says. "You look like you're not a lot more than Cooper, and he's not that big, no matter what he says."  
  
"You can't always believe what you see, Blaine," the boy says, suddenly uncertain, like he's not sure how to explain himself. "I look the way you want me to look, right down to my clothes. If I look like a boy to you right now, it's because right now a boy won't be scary for you. I'm not here to scare you, Blaine."  
  
"You scared me when you came in," Blaine says, accusingly. "If you're not a boy what are you?"  
  
"Are you sure you don't already know?" the boy asks, and the cool breeze gets stronger, blowing the curtains and ruffling Blaine's hair. But not the boy's hair, Blaine notices. Suddenly he realizes that he wind is coming from the boy himself. But it doesn't seem like he's  _making_  the wind, the way you can with a fan or a sheet of paper. It's like…  
  
"Are you the wind?" he asks, cautiously, and for the first time since he's come in, the boy's face lights up with a brilliant, and very nice, smile.  
  
"I was hoping you would know without me telling you," he says. "I've got a good feeling about you, Blaine."  
  
"Why are you so cold?" Blaine asks, uncertainly. It doesn't seem right that a face that happy could still be cold enough to sting the skin on Blaine's arms.  
  
"I'm not," the boy insists. "I'm North. The North Wind always feels cold when you go against it, but I can't help if people aren't smart enough to go where I tell them."  
  
"Is that your name?" Blaine asks. "North Wind?"  
  
"I have a lot of names," the boy says dismissively, but Blaine presses on.  
  
"What name do you want me to call you?"  
  
The boy is silent for a moment, thinking hard.  
  
"Well," he says, slowly. "If you're Blaine, than I must be…Kurt. You can call me Kurt."  
  
"Why Kurt?" Blaine asks. "What does me being me have to do with you being you?"  
  
"I don't know," Kurt says, and Blaine notices that he's telling the truth. "But I know this is how it has to be. This is what works. You ask a lot of questions."  
  
"I have more," Blaine says, because he's not embarrassed to ask why, ever. Asking is the first part of knowing. "Why did you come to  _my_  room? Why does this window have the best view?"  
  
Kurt looks at him sharply, and if Blaine wasn't so good at noticing the things that try to hide, he might have missed the way Kurt's chin trembles just a little, or how empty his whole face gets before snapping back to normal.  
  
"You saw me," he says. "I was going past the window and I saw you look right at me, but you weren't even scared. No one ever sees me unless they do something wrong first, and no one ever looks at me like they aren't scared to see me. People who see me think that I'm ugly, but all they're seeing in me is themselves. The beautiful people never see me, except for you. I wanted to try to talk to you. I haven't talked to anyone in a long time."  
  
"Longer than counting?" Blaine asks, and Kurt smiles.  
  
"Not that long," he says, "but not for a long time. I wanted to see what it was like to talk again."  
  
"You're very good at it," Blaine offers. "Your voice is like music."  
  
Kurt smiles that big smile again.  
  
"Thank you," he says. "Your voice is very happy. I like it."  
  
"If you like happy things, why are you making the outside – sorry, inside. No… wait."  
  
Blaine furrows his brow very hard as he tries to make the things he's thinking come out properly.  
  
"Why are you making  _your_  house and  _my_  outside so angry?"  
  
"Storms aren't angry, Blaine," Kurt says, smiling again. "They're housekeeping. Sometimes I need to do an extra-big clean to take care of all the places I don't like tidying up. That's all a storm is."  
  
Blaine hates cleaning up, so this makes sense to him. He nods, carefully.  
  
"Is it clean yet?" he asks.  
  
"Soon," Kurt says. "I'll be finished tonight."  
  
He pauses for a second, before adding, "Do you want to come with me? I'm not done talking to you yet."  
  
"I'm not supposed to go anywhere without telling someone," Blaine says.  
  
"You can tell me, " Kurt offers. "I'm older than they are, anyhow. I know better than they do, and you'll be back before they know you're gone."  
  
This makes sense to Blaine so he gets up and grabs his housecoat and slippers, already halfway to the door before he hears Kurt laughing again.  
  
"Not that way," Kurt says, holding out his hand. "I go out the way I came in."  
  
"I can't go through the window," Blaine protests. "It's too high. I'll fall."  
  
"You won't fall," Kurt says dismissively. "You can climb onto my back if you're worried."  
  
"What if I slip?" Blaine insists.  
  
"You won't even have to hold on," Kurt insists. "Here, I'll show you."  
  
He reaches out to Blaine and takes him by the arms, swinging him up onto his back like Blaine weighs nothing at all. Kurt lets go and Blaine panics because he hasn't had a chance to steady himself or grab Kurt's shoulders yet, but then he realizes that Kurt is right. Somehow the material of Kurt's shirt has formed a sort of seat, comfortable and roomy, like Kurt has gotten so big that Blaine is sitting in the folds of a giant's clothes, even though when he stares hard at Kurt he's exactly the same size as before.  
  
"Where does your mom buy your clothes?" he asks, suspiciously. Kurt laughs.  
  
"I don't have a mother, and I don’t buy my clothes. They're made of clouds."  
  
"They feel like coming home," Blaine says, even though he doesn't know why he says it, and then suddenly Kurt dives through the small gap in the plastic and they're in the sky.  
  
"You didn't say we'd be flying," Blaine says, clinging tightly to Kurt's neck in terror.  
  
"Blaine," Kurt says, condescendingly. "Have you ever seen the wind  _walk_  somewhere?"  
  
"Until I met you, I'd never seen any wind at all," Blaine says. He doesn't know why he should have been expected to know about this part. At first he's terrified, but after he's gotten used to the way the ground rushes away from beneath him, it becomes exciting. All around him the wind is howling, making the loudest noises he's ever heard, bending tree branches and sending them flying, driving into people who run for shelter, trying to find a safe place to hide. But nothing touches Blaine, and he has no problem hearing Kurt calmly answer when Blaine asks questions, or tell him all the best ways to walk out in a storm without getting hurt and where to find the best shelter.  
  
They see a man with a guitar case gripped awkwardly in his hands as he races to cross the street against the "Don't Walk" sign that's already turned solid. A gust of wind rises up and rips the guitar away, knocking it to the ground where it gets crushed by a bus before the man can snatch it back up.  
  
"Why did you do that?" Blaine demands. "That was mean! He's sad now."  
  
"Obey the street signs, Blaine," Kurt says. "It's dangerous to just walk across the street like that. His guitar would have been fine if he was obeying the rules."  
  
"It would have been fine if you hadn't pulled it away from him," Blaine counters. "I don't think you're so nice anymore."  
  
"I'm not," Kurt says. "I've never been nice. I don't want to be. I want to be good. I want to do what's right."  
  
"It's not right to make someone so sad," Blaine says, thinking about the distraught look on the man's face.  
  
"I've been watching him for a while," Kurt says, sternly. "Sometimes it  _is_  right to make someone sad if it's going to help them later. That man has dreams, Blaine. He wants to leave Ohio and become a famous musician. He wants the world to know his name. In a perfect world it might happen, but right now what he  _does_  have is a wife and a son who love him very much, and another baby on the way. With the money he made playing at the bar tonight, he thought he had enough to leave his family and start a new life for himself, where no one loves him and he has nothing but dreams to talk to. That's a terrible, dangerous way to live, Blaine. If you want to live with dreams you need to decide early, before you make people need you. When people love you, it hurts if you leave too soon."  
  
"How did breaking his guitar help?" Blaine asks.  
  
Kurt smirks a little.  
  
"He can't chase after his dreams if he doesn't have anything to chase it with," he says. "He'll still leave, eventually, but he'll need a new guitar first, and it will take years before he can go away. His little boy deserves more, but in the end I can only do so much."  
  
Blaine is silent for a while after that, thinking about the family whose daddy is leaving so slowly they don't know how to make it stop. He knows how sad he would feel if he was that little boy. Not as sad as Cooper, probably, because he's never been as close to his parents as Cooper is, but it would still be the most terrible thing Blaine can imagine.  
  
They've been flying for a while when a flash of dark hair and a red fall coat on the ground below catches his eye. He looks closer and sees a small Asian girl, desperately trying to keep her coat held together over her thin nightgown, and her hair out of her eyes as it whips all around her face. She's crying, and she looks scared.  
  
"Stop," Blaine says, "Let's talk to her and see what's wrong."  
  
"We can't stop," Kurt says, shortly. "And what's wrong is that her parents don't notice when their daughter goes out into a storm in pajamas. I'll deal with them when I have a chance, but I can't help someone who needs kindness when I need to be angry."  
  
"But she's scared," Blaine insists, "And  _I_  went into the storm in my pajamas. Why can't you carry both of us?"  
  
"You're not  _in_  the storm, you're  _with_  the storm," Kurt says. "That makes all the difference, and I can't carry everyone. You're special because you see me and we can talk to each other when things aren't bad or scary, but if I carry anyone else on my back it's because they can never go home again. I'll send a message to the South and West winds to come see to her once I'm gone, but it's the best I can do. I'm sorry, Blaine."  
  
Blaine is so surprised to hear there's more than one wind he almost stops thinking altogether to ask about it, but then a pitiful wail from the girl below reminds him what they're fighting about.  
  
"Put me down," Blaine says quickly.  
  
"What?" Kurt sounds shocked. "No. It's dangerous on the ground, Blaine."  
  
"You can't help good people right now, but  _I_  can. Put me down and I'll help her be safe until you're finished, then you can come and take me home."  
  
"I have a lot of work to do, Blaine," Kurt says. "You'll be alone a long time."  
  
"I'll be with her," Blaine says. "And I won't be scared like she is. She needs me."  
  
Kurt huffs a little like Cooper does when Blaine asks him to buy him something, but he's smiling a little like he's proud. He lifts Blaine up and sets him carefully on the ground, just around the corner from where the girl is crying.  
  
"Don't get hurt," he says abruptly before he's gone, except for the wind that flies at Blaine like it's hitting him.  
  
He scurries around the corner and up to the girl, who looks like she might be as old as he is. She screams a little when he runs up to her from behind and grabs her hand, but he only shakes his head at her as he looks around for a safe place where the wind won't chase them, trying to remember what Kurt said about the places he won't go. He finally finds what he's looking for when he sees a ditch, not too far away from them in front of a closed golf course. He pulls the girl after him and they climb down inside as quickly as they can. It's quieter inside, and they have a clear view of the road several yards away from them. The little girl is still crying.  
  
"It's okay," Blaine says, as consolingly as he can. "There's nothing to be scared of now."  
  
"I wanna go home," the little girl cries.  
  
"Why are you out here?" Blaine asks, curiously, hoping to distract her. "You shouldn't be out in a storm this bad by yourself."  
  
"I was running away," says the girl, huddling closer to Blaine for warmth as the wind howls above them.  
  
"Why?" he asks.  
  
"No one sees me," she says, and she's so hard to hear over the wind with her quiet little voice. "No one cares if I'm at home or not, because all they talk about is my brother. I don't think they like me very much, so I went to find people who did."  
  
"I like you," Blaine offers, which is the truth. The little girl is friendly and when she smiles her eyes are warm and soft. He doesn't understand why her parents wouldn't like her.  
  
"My name is Tina," she says. "What's yours?"  
  
Blaine tells her, and then she asks,  
  
"Are you running away, too?"  
  
"I was visiting a friend," Blaine says, trying to talk the way he's heard his mother talk after she goes over to other people's houses. "We were going by when I saw you and wanted to help."  
  
"Where's your friend now?"  
  
"He'll be back later. He has to take me home."  
  
The girl's face crumples a little at the mention of home, so Blaine quickly changes the subject. He finds out that Tina is the same age as he is and both her brother and Cooper go to the same school. Blaine thinks that he might even go to the same kindergarten as her when school starts up in a few days. They both have the same favourite colour (blue), and Tina thinks that the best book is  _Higglety Pigglety Pop_ , even though the best book is clearly  _Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich_. They're still arguing about this what feels like hours later when a car drives down the road, slowly, with a worried face peering out the window shining a flashlight down the street.  
  
"That's my mom!" Tina exclaims, jumping up and waving excitedly. "They noticed I wasn't there, Blaine! They missed me!"  
  
"So you're not running away anymore?" Blaine asks. "They look really upset."  
  
"They noticed," Tina is almost glowing. "I don't need to."  
  
She reaches down to him and holds out her hand, but Blaine shakes his head.  
  
"I can't," he says. "I promised Kurt I would stay close so he could take me home. He won't be long. Goodnight, Tina. I'm glad your parents want you."  
  
Tina falls back to the ground to hug him before leaping up again to rush and meet her parents, who are almost at the ditch by now. They start talking to her excitedly in a language Blaine doesn't understand but likes the sound of. They go back to the car and drive off into the night. Blaine is glad Tina is safe with her parents again, but he is very tired, so tired he doesn't even feel cold anymore. His eyes stay closed longer and longer, until they don't open again at all. When he wakes up he is back at home in his own bed with only very vague memories of being gently picked up and carried back by the wind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Alternate link to Peachfaerie's art.](http://morph0fairy.deviantart.com/art/Where-Wind-and-Water-Meet-chpt-1-309528199)


	3. Chapter 2

School starts and Blaine's best friend there is Tina, who is in the same classroom as he is. They laugh and play, and Tina doesn't even mind when Blaine forgets to act like other people in front of her.  
  
"Why do you do that?" She asks one time. "You're so quiet and you stop moving, like you've gone away."  
  
"I think I do," Blaine admits. "Sometimes I don't feel like me. I feel wrong, like I'm too big for six years old and I don't fit."  
  
"Maybe you'll grow to fit you," Tina suggests, like she hears people say such strange things all the time.  
  
He tells her about Kurt, too, and she tells him all about her own special friend that no one can see, whose name is Tina, too.  
  
"Tina is very brave," she tells him. "She always says when she knows the answer, and she never has to hide behind her mom when she's meeting someone new. She's teaching me to be brave like her."  
  
It's not long before Blaine figures out that the second Tina is just the first Tina playing pretend, but it's nice to be able to talk to someone about Kurt, even though she doesn't really understand. He talks to Kurt about Tina sometimes too, when he comes to the now always-open window and they run off for adventures together. At first Kurt doesn't like hearing Blaine talk about Tina and says very nasty things about her.  
  
"I shouldn't have let you stop to help her that first night I took you with me," he says. "She didn't deserve your help anyhow. We should have just left her there."  
  
Blaine closes the window for the next three nights and locks it tight, just to make sure Kurt knows that he's not allowed to say mean things about nice people, and Kurt is a little sheepish when he's finally allowed back into Blaine's room again, apologizing and promising to share.  
  
"Do you like her more than me?" He asks one Saturday afternoon, looking at Blaine like he's worried. "Are you going to close the window now that you talk to someone your age?"  
  
"You and me are like the same age now," Blaine points out.   
  
They're sitting together in the backyard, not going anywhere this time. Kurt is softer and gentler right now, and not feeling strong enough to carry Blaine, so they sit side-by-side on the swings, rocking gently. Kurt looks different, younger, when he's calmer. His looks change a lot when his strength changes, because even though he says he could stay the same size all the time, "it feels better when the insides and the outsides match." It's taken Blaine a long time to recognize him in all his different sizes, but he's starting to like them all. This particular Kurt is one of his favourites because Kurt is small like he is, and round like he is, and he looks like a five-and-a-half-year-old, too. He's still bossy, and he still orders Blaine around, but he doesn't fight as hard when Blaine doesn't want to listen. If this Kurt was his all-the-time Kurt, he might get tired of it, but sometimes it's very nice not to have to look up to the person you spend so much time talking to.

 

"And Tina's not my age," Blaine adds, even though he knows they've been alive the same number of years. He's not sure why that doesn't matter, but he's sure he's older than Tina. "And I might close the window  _sometimes_ , if she's here and I can't come, but I'll never leave it closed forever. There's no one in the world who I like more than you."  
  
"Good," Kurt says, nodding to himself in relief. "The other winds were talking and they were saying that you might have left to find a new favourite. I should have known they weren't telling the truth. They're always so jealous."  
  
Kurt isn't making much sense, but there are a lot of times Kurt doesn't make sense. Kurt always seems to think that Blaine knows more than he does, when sometimes Blaine can't understand even one word of what Kurt is telling him. When this happens, Blaine always starts to worry that Kurt has mistaken him for someone else. He never says anything, just in case there really has been an accident and asking more questions chases his Kurt away from him. It's the only time he doesn't ask when he wants to know.  
  
"What are the other winds like?" Blaine asks, a little to change the subject but even more because he loves hearing about the things Kurt hasn't shown him yet. "What are their names?"  
  
Kurt looks sulky again, which is very funny on something as strong as the weather.  
  
"I don't know why you care about them," he says, darkly, and the wind around them blows just a little bit colder. "I thought you liked me most."  
  
"I do," Blaine reassures, "but I've never even  _met_  the other winds. I want to know who it is I like you more than."  
  
Kurt sighs, but gives in. Kurt always gives in when Blaine asks. It's one of the best things about him.  
  
"East Wind is the best when she's cold and strong like me. She likes to throw ice on the people who live close to her side of the water, but that's only because she wants attention. East Wind  _always_  wants attention."  
  
"Do you play with each other?" Blaine asks, but Kurt just snorts a little.  
  
"I like Rachel – that's East Wind – fine, but I don't like playing games with her. She always tries to win, even though the only one who  _should_  be winning anything is me. I do work with her sometimes, though. I work with all the winds."  
  
"What do you do?" Blaine asks.  
  
"It depends where we are, and how many of us are working." Kurt says. "Hurricanes are the hardest. I don't like it when we have to build those."  
  
"It sounds like a lot of work," Blaine offers.  
  
"It used to be easier," Kurt says, glancing at Blaine out of the corner of his eye as his feet trail in the dirt beneath them, stirring up clouds. "But hurricanes don't work without the water helping, and the water isn't as helpful as it used to be. It's like there's a piece missing, like the part that listens to us has gone missing. We can't really talk to the water at all anymore."  
  
"I'm sorry," Blaine says, not sure why he feels guilty.  
  
Kurt only shrugs.  
  
"Maybe it will come back one day," he says. "It would be good. We all miss it."  
  
"Who else is in the wind?" Blaine asks. "What are the other names?"  
  
"You keep forgetting everyone has more than one name," Kurt smiles. "But the other winds are West and South. If you call  _me_  Kurt and  _East_  Rachel, then you could call the other two Mercedes and Finn. They're much warmer to walk against, and people like them a lot more because they think they're so gentle and peaceful."  
  
"You're gentle and peaceful," Blaine points out.  
  
"But people don't think of me like that," Kurt says. "And I  _am_  more used to yelling than I am to talking quietly. Finn is usually pretty quiet, even though he's very strong. The other winds boss him around a lot."  
  
"What about Mercedes?" Blaine asks, sounding out the name carefully, because even though it's beautiful it's very long and hard say in the right order.  
  
"Mercedes is warm," Kurt smiles, and Blaine thinks that maybe it means Mercedes is Kurt's favourite. "But she's very strong, especially in mountains, and she can hurt a lot of people if they're not careful, or if they're where they're not supposed to be."  
  
"Why do you like that she can hurt people?" Blaine asks, because he can tell that Kurt does and still doesn't know what to make of someone who likes pain the way he seems to.  
  
"I like it because I like strong things that get mistaken for weak things," Kurt says. "That's why I like you, Blaine. You're strong in unexpected ways."  
  
"Cooper says I'm not even a little strong," Blaine says, skeptically. "And he makes me hit myself, which isn't what strong people do."  
  
"I said you're strong in unexpected ways," Kurt says, patiently. "In special ways, you're stronger than Cooper."  
  
"How?" Blaine asks.  
  
"You were brave enough to understand when people have to die," Kurt says. "Even though you know what dying is."  
  
It's true that Blaine does know about death, because last year they had to put the family cat to sleep. It's also true that on the night Kurt brought him home early because he had to go to a house fire, he cried himself to sleep when he found out that Kurt wasn't going to be there to help stop it.  
  
***  
  
 _"Remember what I said that first night about how most people can only climb onto my back if I'm taking them away forever?" Kurt says, gently. "They go away after they're too hurt to go on living. I take them to a place where it doesn't hurt anymore, and I keep them safe. But the only way they get to come with me is if they leave here and don't come back. They have to be dead before they leave, or else it doesn't work."_  
  
"But if people are scared and in trouble you should be helping them," Blaine says.  
  
"I do help," Kurt says, "Just in a different way than you want me to. The fire is hot where I'm going; it's scary and out-of-control and is making very scared people hurt. Where they are is terrible for them, and they can't get out, so my job is to blow the smoke over them until they get sleepy, so they don't feel when they're put on my back. I get to help the hurting stop and then I get to take them to a place where everything is good again."  
  
"How do you know they can't get out?" Blaine insists. "What happens to those people if you're wrong?"  
  
"I'm never wrong," Kurt says. "There's music in the air all around us Blaine, only you can't hear it with your little human ears. But I hear, and I listen. It always tells me who I can save and who I can't. It tells me who needs to be carried and who will be able to walk. I can't make mistakes. The song won't let me."  
  
Blaine thinks about the people, scared and hot inside a house burning bright enough to burn them to ashes, and then he thinks about how safe and lovely it is to go flying with Kurt and nods once to himself.  
  
"You'd better hurry," he says, waving goodbye at their window before throwing himself onto his bed and sobbing for the people who are going to leave soon and never come back. He's never felt so much before.  
  
***  
  
"You're not very brave if you cry about it," Blaine tells the small Kurt as they sit next to each other on the swings.   
  
"Sometimes the bravest people are the ones who are crying," Kurt says. "Sometimes the people who are crying are the only ones who understand enough to be brave."  
  
"Where do you take the dead people?" Blaine asks, curiously.  
  
"I take them to the country at my back," Kurt says. "Behind the North Wind."  
  
"What's it like there?"  
  
"I wouldn't know," Kurt says. "The people who see it seem to like it very much. At least, they almost never leave once they've gone inside, but I can't see it. It's always behind me."  
  
"That's not fair," Blaine says. "It's not fair for you to have to take everyone to a place that's so good but never be allowed to see it for yourself. Why don't you get to go there?"  
  
"If I went there it wouldn't be real anymore," Kurt says, and he looks extra sad as he says it, when his body is so small and unimportant-looking like it is right now. "I'll never know what it's like."  
  
"Yes you will," Blaine says, determinedly. "One day, you'll take me and  _I'll_  get to go. As soon as I'm there, I'll come right back out and I'll tell you about  _everything_. I'll tell you so good it's like you get to go in, too."  
  
Kurt is looking at him strangely again.   
  
"Most people don't want me to take them to that place," he says. "They almost always ask for more time when they see me coming. They're almost always scared. Why do you talk about 'getting' to go with me?"  
  
Blaine is quiet for a moment, thinking carefully about what Kurt is asking, before he finally settles on saying,  
  
"It sounds like a hard place to get to."  
  
Kurt confirms this.  
  
"It's the hardest place to get to."  
  
"It takes a long time to do hard things, and I like you more than anyone. If I get to go with you, maybe getting there will feel like forever, and that means I get to spend forever with you. That's so much nicer than staying here by myself."  
  
Kurt sits quietly for a moment, diminishing until he almost seems to be disappearing before Blaine's eyes. Then he suddenly charges up out of his seat, catching Blaine up in his arms as he does so. Blaine can feel Kurt's lonely sadness in the hug so strongly it's like a living thing, so he hugs back just as hard, hoping to chase some of it away. Kurt's arms feel strong again and when he looks harder he sees it's because the first Kurt, his favourite Kurt, is here now, and Blaine smiles. Little Kurt is nice, but this Kurt is  _his_.  
  
"I'm so glad I found you," Kurt says, setting Blaine down and taking his hand as they walk to the end of the yard. They jump over the gate instead of opening it, and suddenly they're flying again. Blaine tries to guess where they're going next.  
  
"Me too," he says, and he wonders if it's wrong that he might love Kurt more than Cooper and Tina, and even Mom and Dad. He wonders what it means when you know the wind better than you know your own family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Alternate link to Peachfaerie's art.](http://morph0fairy.deviantart.com/art/Where-Wind-and-Water-Meet-chpt-2-309583873?q=gallery%3Amorph0fairy%2F9693347&qo=2)


	4. Chapter 3

Kurt tells Blaine that everything starts small, and he's right. It starts the night Kurt comes to the window and tells Blaine all about the oceans and asks if Blaine wants to go see it for himself.  
  
"I want to see the water," Blaine says, slowly, because he loves the waves and the sounds they make. When his family went on vacation to the beach last summer, Blaine spent all his time sitting with his feet in the water, listening to the waves splashing.  
  
"Then why do you look like you're going to say no?" Kurt asks.  
  
"Can we go tomorrow?" Blaine asks, shyly. "I don't feel right tonight."  
  
"What does that mean?" Kurt demands. "What do you mean, 'you don't feel right'?"  
  
Blaine shrugs, a little helplessly.  
  
"It feels like I'm moving," Blaine says, not sure how to explain. "I'm standing still but everything inside feels like it's falling. I don't think I want to fly tonight."  
  
Kurt looks troubled but he nods almost right away.  
  
"Then you should sleep tonight," he says, pulling away as he speaks, like he wants to leave quickly. He doesn't look angry though. He looks surprised and not surprised at the same time, the way Blaine's dad looked when he broke something in his shoulder and the doctors had to poke at it to ask where it hurt.   
  
"Will you come show me tomorrow?" Blaine asks, calling out as Kurt moves backwards, further and further from him.  
  
"I'll show you when you're ready to go," he says, looking at Blaine one last time with wide, serious eyes.  
  
Blaine wants to be upset and a little scared, because Kurt has never looked at him like that before. He doesn't know what it means. But when he tries to set his mind to sorting out what's not being said out loud, he's too tired to hold the thoughts in his mind before they slip away again. Eventually he stumbles back to his bed on unsteady feet and throws himself onto it. He's forgotten what it was he was trying to think about by the time his head hits the pillow, and doesn't think another hard thought for a very long time.  
  
Time starts to misbehave as he lies there, and so does the air in the room. Everything hits him too hot or too cold, changing faster than he can keep the blankets on or off his body. The dust in the air hits his skin so hard it feels like needles digging into him all over. Everything hurts. He wants to call to Kurt or his parents and ask them for help, but he can't make the words come out of his mouth, like his lips and throat won't work at the same time anymore. The only thing he can do is lie there, because he is so miserable and alone. At one point he looks outside and thinks he can see Kurt, looking in and watching him, with big white wings stretching out around him and a sad expression on his face, but then Blaine blinks or falls asleep, he's not sure which, and when his eyes open again there is no one.  
  
Finally a brief moment and a lifetime later, a light is turned on just above him. Blaine tries to turn his head away, trying not to make a noise because it's so  _bright_  he can feel the light burning into his eyes, even after he's squeezed them tight.  
  
" _Someone's_  crabby this morning," comes Cooper's voice, floating atop the silence echoing in his ears, but never sinking far into his mind. "Come on, Blaine. Get up. You'll be late for school and if you are, you're gonna get it."  
  
Blaine doesn't answer, just lies there.  
  
"Blaine?" Cooper says, a question in his voice now, and Blaine hears him come closer to the bed. The air shifts around him as he walks, and the movement scrapes against Blaine's skin like sandpaper. "Are you okay?"  
  
A finger cautiously pokes Blaine in the side and it feels like a knife is going in. Blaine  _does_  cry out now, cringing away from the contact. Cooper carefully sets a hand on Blaine's cheek before pulling it back suddenly like he's been burned. His footsteps fly out of the room and down the stairs, making a terrible racket as Blaine hears him shout,  
  
"Mom? How do you tell when someone has a fever? Blaine's acting weird and he's really, really hot."  
  
Things get even fuzzier after that. He briefly realizes his mother is staring down at him, trying to get him to answer questions as she puts her freezing cold wrists on his forehead and the back of his neck. His father's face swims in front of him once or twice, too, and he hears scared voices talking in words that don't sound quite like English anymore. Cold, wet cloths are pressed to his skin, making his teeth chatter until even his bones are shaking.  
  
Soon there are strange faces floating in and out of his sight, too. People he doesn't remember and maybe has never even seen before all lean down and move their mouths at him, talking at him over and over, shaking at his shoulders and staring at him like they want him to say things. But even sound has disappeared now, and all that's left is the roaring of blood, boiling hot and tearing through his body. He wonders vaguely where all the other noises went.  
  
When he realizes he's not in his bed anymore he has the idea that the change might have happened a long time ago and he's only just sorted out that it's happened. He wonders what it means when a person takes such a long time to notice such big changes. But maybe it's alright, because it's always taken Blaine a long time to notice big things. It's why his mother used to get so sad about him before Kurt came and woke him up. Maybe it's why she's crying now. He watches her cry her noiseless tears with glazed and unfocused eyes until she falls asleep, sitting in a chair beside him. He doesn't know where his dad and Cooper went. Maybe they're sick, too. Every now and then a stiff figure in white comes and hovers at the end of his bed, staring solemnly and holding charts. Blaine wonders if they're angels, and the thought makes him sad, because he always hoped angels would be friendlier and more interesting. He's always hoped they would be more like Kurt.   
  
Blaine drifts, floating on hazy thoughts of wings and figures in white. He floats for days, or hours, or maybe minutes, and then someone is gently shaking his ankle by the foot of the bed. He forces his eyes to focus and it's Kurt, standing by his bed looking very uncomfortable, uncertain, like he's not used to being so far inside – or outside, for Kurt. He looks lost in the woods.  
  
"I'm sick," Blaine says.  
  
"You're ready," Kurt says.  
  
"You have wings," Blaine comments, because even though he knows Kurt wants him to go with him, he's not feeling any great hurry to get up. He feels comfortable for the first time in ages – the aches have all left him.  
  
Kurt looks over his shoulder to his wings in surprise, like he didn't know they were there before.  
  
"Why did you give me wings?" He asks, curiously.  
  
"Because you can fly," Blaine answers, like it's simple. "And because wings feel safe."  
  
"I'm glad you like them," Kurt says, "but you need to come with me now."  
  
"Are we going somewhere?" Blaine asks.  
  
"We're going far away," Kurt says. "I have something I want to show you."  
  
"Will we come back? Will  _I_  come back?"  
  
Kurt stares at him hard for a minute before he finally admits,  
  
"I don't know. People aren't allowed to come back from the places I take them, but you already do, all the time."  
  
"What does the music say?" Blaine asks.  
  
"It says something I've never heard it say before," Kurt says. "I know you need to come with me, but I don't know what will happen after. I'm sorry."  
  
"That's okay," Blaine says, sitting up quickly, like he was never sick at all. "It's going to be like an adventure. I like adventures when I have them with you."  
  
He lets Kurt help him get settled onto his back, and it's different to be held by feathers instead of clothes, but Blaine thinks he might like it.  
  
"Are we going to see your country?" He asks.  
  
"You are," Kurt confirms, moving quickly out of the room, like he doesn't like staying where he doesn't belong. Blaine glances behind them just once before they slide into a vent, and is surprised when he sees the shape of his old body, still filling the sheets on the bed.  
  
***  
  
"I can't take you the whole way," Kurt says apologetically, after they've been travelling long enough to start skimming over the top of water instead of land.

 

"Why not?" Blaine asks, surprised and a little upset, because this was a trip he only wanted to take with  _Kurt_. "Do you have something else you have to do?"  
  
"We need to fly around the world to get to the back of me," Kurt says. "The closer we get to the end, the heavier you get. I'm not strong when I'm close to my beginning. I'm like you were when you were a little baby. I'll be waiting for you there, and I'll carry you for as long as I can, but that very last part of the journey someone else will have to take you."  
  
"Who will it be?" Blaine asks, a little worried.  
  
"Just Finn," Kurt says, "He'll be passing me anyhow and he always helps when I ask him."  
  
"He won't drop me, will he?" Blaine asks, uncertainly.  
  
"He wouldn't dare," is all Kurt says, and Blaine thinks he might be smiling in that smug way he has when he thinks he's stronger than something. It's a smile Kurt wears a lot, but Blaine has noticed that smile usually means Kurt is right, so he's not very worried what feels like weeks later when Finn shows up.  
  
Kurt has been getting closer and closer to the water, so tired sometimes Blaine thinks he can feel the sleepy ache move through Kurt's body into his. Kurt keeps the same shape he had in the strange room Blaine was taken away from, but Blaine thinks he might be doing that on purpose so he can stay at a size that lets him carry Blaine longer. They don't talk much now, because Kurt is too busy concentrating on moving forward. Blaine is a little scared that Kurt might die after he leaves and wants to go back home where Kurt will be safe, but Kurt promises.  
  
"Winds don't die, Blaine. They start over. This part doesn't last forever."  
  
So Blaine allows Finn to take him off of Kurt's back and settles onto this new wind's shoulder. Finn really is much stronger than Kurt is right now, and very broad. He makes Blaine think of giants and towers, but when he looks at Finn's face, all he sees is gentleness and uncertainty. He wonders if maybe Finn doesn't know how strong he is.  
  
In a moment the uncertain face Finn is making is washed away, replaced by surprise as he glances first at Blaine and then back to Kurt.  
  
"You weren't wrong," he says to Kurt, suddenly awkward and trying to cringe away from his own shoulder, like he's not sure he wants Blaine so close all of the sudden.  
  
"Of course I wasn't wrong," Kurt snaps, but his voice is weak and small.  
  
"Why are you taking him away?" Finn demands, and he sounds panicked and angry.  
  
"I'm taking him because he asked to see the country," Kurt says between gritted teeth.  
  
"But he doesn't – " Finn starts, but Kurt cuts him off.  
  
"What else was I supposed to do?" He looks so upset, more upset than Blaine has ever seen him. "He was  _hurt_. I couldn't let him stay."  
  
"It's not our business if he's hurt," Finn insists, and Blaine just wants someone to tell him what's going on. He knows this fight is about him, but he doesn't know why.  
  
"You don't know that," Kurt says, desperately. "The music changed, Finn. I know it doesn't make sense, but I promise I'm only doing what I was told. Just take him with you. Please?"  
  
There's a tense silence and then Finn sags a little, bending to Kurt's demands even though he seems so much bigger right now. His shoulder is so wide, Blaine barely feels the motion at all.  
  
"Thank you," Kurt says, and he flies on without another word.  
  
Blaine frowns, because he didn't get a chance to say goodbye, but Finn sighs and says,  
  
"Don't worry. You'll see him again soon. He has to do the last part alone."  
  
"Oh," Blaine says, and they travel in silence, because Blaine doesn't know how to act around something so strong. He thinks Finn might not like him. After the quiet has gotten so loud Blaine thinks he can hear it talking, Finn says,  
  
"You shouldn't be here right now. Has anyone told you you're not normal?"  
  
"People think it," Blaine says, because there's no point in lying about it.  
  
"They're thinking the right thing," Finn says. "Kurt's been keeping you away from the rest of us because he thinks if we'll tell you things that will scare you. We weren't even sure if you were real because we couldn't figure out where he kept you."  
  
"Why would not belonging make me scared?" Blaine asks.  
  
"Kurt thinks you're lost," Finn says. "Maybe you are or maybe you just left, but it's not right that he's treating you like you belong with the rest of them."  
  
"The rest of who?" Blaine asks, completely bewildered. Finn doesn't make even half as much sense as Kurt does.  
  
"Just remember that you're different," Finn says, ignoring the question. "And no matter how much you like the country, it's not your place to belong. You can't stop somewhere you don't fit."  
  
They don't talk again for the rest of the journey. Blaine decides that he doesn't like Finn that much.  
  
***  
  
Kurt is sitting at the top of the world on a boulder made of ice, water lapping at his feet when Finn finally sets Blaine back down onto the ground and flies away with a sombre nod in their direction. Kurt is hunched in on himself and listless. He stares mostly at his feet or his tightly clasped hands, but when Blaine runs up and rests a hand on his knee, Kurt stares straight at him and smiles.  
  
"Off you go," he says, softly.  
  
"Why do you look so sad?" Blaine demands, because he could never leave when Kurt looks so lonely.  
  
"I'm not sad," Kurt says. "I'm tired. I'm always tired here. This is where I go when I need to be still."  
  
"So this is like sleeping for you?" Blaine asks, needing to be sure everything is alright before he leaves.  
  
"Exactly," Kurt replies. "Go on ahead, Blaine. I promise I'm fine."  
  
Satisfied, Blaine quickly squeezes Kurt's hand and runs around to Kurt's back, but there's nothing there.  
  
"Is something supposed to happen?" He asks, cautiously. "Everything looks the same."  
  
"Well, you didn't do anything," Kurt says, and he sounds like he would be laughing if he wasn't so still. "You can't just walk in. Most people ask for help before they can get inside."  
  
"Finn says I'm not most people," Blaine says, a little sulkily, because he still doesn't think much of the South Wind.  
  
"Never mind what Finn says," Kurt says, a little sterner than before. "Come back here and I'll make sure you get to the country."  
  
Once Blaine is facing Kurt again, Kurt carefully reaches out his hands and lifts Blaine up. His arms are shaking, like it's taking everything he has to do something so small, but he doesn't drop Blaine as he softly sets Blaine down at his back, like he has so many other times. But it's not like the other times, Blaine realizes a second later, because he's not sitting in the folds of a shirt anymore, or even in a nest of feathers. He's standing in a place that he's never been before and he can't see Kurt at all. All around him is the country at the back of the North Wind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Alternate link to Peachfaerie's art.]()


	5. Chapter 4

Blaine explores the country for what must be days, although he's never certain because in the entire country there's not a single clock or calendar to be found. Everywhere he looks there's something new to take in: A flower he's never seen before, an animal that he's only ever looked at in books, or a person with a different and exciting story to tell him. The weather is beautiful, summer all the time, and all around him he feels the sun on his skin, and hears the laughing water of the countless rivers that pass by his feet. The water is beautiful, and makes Blaine want to splash around in it and play, like he used to do with Tina when they spent their summer afternoons at the pool.  
  
"Does anyone swim here?"   
  
He only asks the question once, the entire time he's there. There never seems to be much point in asking anything more than one time because people only seem to know one answer for any given question.  
  
"Of course not," says the lady he's speaking to, interrupting her story about how people used to say she could use paint to create new worlds and realities. She seems surprised that anyone would think to even ask such a question. "The rivers all move quickly here. There's no telling how far away you'd go once you dove in."  
  
She never says anything about drowning, and Blaine thinks that maybe people don't die here, because it's something a person can only ever do one time. But just because something can't kill you, it doesn't make it safe, so Blaine stays away from the water for quite some time, even though after a while it's the only thing about the entire country that interests him.  
  
It's not that Blaine doesn't like the people he meets, or that he thinks that it's boring. But it's something  _like_  boring. It's constant and unchanging and Blaine can't sit comfortably in the middle of so much monotony. Making everything worse is the fact that Kurt can't come in to talk to him, and Blaine thinks maybe he doesn't like it because there's not much point in enjoying any place when Kurt can't be there to share it with him. He wants to go back and tell Kurt about all the things he's seen since coming into the country like he promised he would, but now that he's here he knows why people have so much trouble leaving. There seems to be no way out at all. Blaine knows he can't have walked too far from where Kurt set him when he first arrived, but no matter where he looks, he never sees the end of the country or Kurt's back.  
  
Further complicating things is time. Time doesn't really go anywhere in Kurt's country, but eventually Blaine feels as though he's been looking for Kurt for what should be years. He spends less and less time talking to the interesting people and more time trying to get back to Kurt, until in the end he never talks to anyone at all. He just smiles at them when they catch his eye and carries on by himself. He feels himself getting older, his body stretching out and getting longer, his voice dropping down to something lower and more powerful. It stops when he thinks he might be close to the same size Kurt was that first night they met, and he's happy because he likes the thought that he's becoming more like Kurt. But he also sees how the other people around him stay the same, never getting older and the way he changes makes him feel even more out of place with the forever young people that wander around him.  
  
One day as Blaine heads out in a roughly easterly direction, trying to find just a hint of something that reminds him of Kurt, that will give him any clue about how to get back, he almost runs straight into a girl he hasn't seen before, walking with just as much determination in the other direction.   
  
"I'm sorry," Blaine says, smiling at her dismissively. It's not unusual that she's new to him. New people seem to arrive every day, and there were already so many people here before. Blaine thinks if he stayed for all of time he'd never come close to meeting even half of them. He's about to carry on past her when all of the sudden something about her strikes him as off. Just like him, she feels like something that should be passing through and not staying. He looks at her cautiously and notices how she's doing the same thing, staring at Blaine like something isn't exactly right.  
  
For a long time neither one of them move, looking at each other like they've stumbled across a strange sort of alien life form, when finally the girl narrows her eyes at him and says,  
  
"Why do you see me? I wasn't planning on anyone seeing me right now."  
  
That's when Blaine notices that her hair is moving gently around her, like the breeze is starting from her, not disturbing her.  
  
"Who are you?" He demands, excited like he hasn't been since he said goodbye to Kurt. "Kurt told me that he couldn't get in, but if you're just like he is, how are you here right now?"  
  
The girl is just as excited and agitated.  
  
"Of course Kurt can't get in here. His country is always behind him, and whoever heard of anyone who can stand behind themselves? But you! You're  _him_. When Kurt told us you were back and that you had come here, we thought you'd forget you'd ever even seen us. Everyone in this place forgets about us."  
  
She frowns a little and tilts her head to the side before adding, "I don't understand. You're just as big as I am, but Finn said that you were smaller."  
  
"I was when I met him," Blaine says. "But I've been in this place for a very long time. There's no way out."  
  
"There's always a way out," the girl says, distractedly. "Nevermind that. You can't tell me that you've  _grown_. No one gets older here, it's one of the rules. Why have you changed?"  
  
"I feel just as old as I always was," Blaine says, even though he knows it's not a very good answer. "I'm just bigger that's all. I make more sense this size than I do when I'm smaller."  
  
"Well  _that's_  true. I certainly didn't think it was very realistic of you to be such a small child," the girl says almost disapprovingly, straightening her shoulders like she's decided on something. "It's very good to meet you, Blaine. I am the East Wind, and I would like to stay and talk but I really have to be going, I was only meaning to take a shortcut and now I'm dreadfully behind schedule, so – "  
  
"Wait," Blaine interrupts, ready to reach out and stop her if she tries to fly. "You can get out of this place. How? I walk and I walk but I can't find my way back to the start."  
  
Rachel – Blaine remembers Kurt saying that the East Wind was Rachel – smiles at him, and it feels a little bit condescending, as though she's still talking to Blaine's old, 6-year-old body.  
  
"Silly," she says. "You can't  _walk_  out. The land Kurt's country sits on stretches out forever."  
  
"Then how is it a shortcut?"  
  
Rachel winks at him, like she's about to give him a hint.  
  
"The  _land_  stretches out forever. If you're really such good friends with Kurt you should know that Kurt never goes _anywhere_  by land."  
  
"You have to fly out?" Blaine asks, his heart sinking as he says it. "But, I only fly with him. I can't do it on my own."  
  
"You'll have to think of something else then," Rachel says. "If you really want to leave."  
  
"I just want to talk to him again," Blaine says, feeling even more out-of-place with the sadness that's pressing down on him. Sadness doesn't belong in Kurt's country.  
  
"I'm sure you'll think of something," Rachel offers.  
  
"What if you take me?" Blaine asks, looking at her pleadingly. Rachel bristles and frowns at him in disapproval.  
  
"I help when I'm  _needed_ , Blaine," she says. "You need to learn to carry your own weight. If you can't fly, you'll just have to come up with something else."  
  
She pushes off with a dainty foot and almost instantly is gone, the breeze disappearing with her as she goes. Blaine sighs and sits heavily on the ground, because for a moment he felt like he was so close to getting back to his Kurt again. He never should have agreed to come. At least when he was with his parents he wasn't trapped inside his bedroom, never able to reach the window. Kurt probably thinks Blaine hates him and is never coming out to talk again, just because Blaine isn't smart enough to find a way back. He flops down onto the grass and tears up handfuls of it, aimlessly tossing it into one of the many rivers. He ignores the scandalized look being sent to him from the man sitting on the bank several feet away.   
  
He's not sure how long he sits there, staring at the water as it washes away the blades of grass, before he realizes just what it is he's seeing. If the water carries away the grass, maybe it could carry him away, too. After all, everyone  _does_ say that the water here travels fast, just like it has somewhere else to be. Blaine looks around, desperately. He doesn't know how to make a boat or raft, but surely there must be something in this place that he can use to  _try_. Surely there must be  _someone_  here, someone out of all these aimless, wandering people who can help him. The people here all did amazing things in their old lives, it can't be too hard to find someone who will help him now.  
  
He searches until he finds a man who says that when he was alive he used to sail ships.  
  
"Could you help me build something to sail on?" Blaine asks, eagerly. The man smiles and laughs happily.  
  
"Of course," he says. "It's no trouble at all. When would you like to start?"  
  
"Oh, right now please." Blaine says, before adding politely, "If it's not too much trouble."  
  
"None at all," the man assures him. "Let's just sit down for a minute and think about how we're going to start."  
  
They sit quietly for a very long time, and after a while, Blaine starts to get the feeling that the man isn't planning anything at all.  
  
"What do you think?" he asks, hesitantly. "How should we begin?"  
  
"We need to start by sitting down and taking a minute to decide what to do," the man says, and Blaine's optimistic enthusiasm fades.  
  
"You haven't started to think about it yet?" He asks.  
  
"This isn't the sort of thing that a person just rushes into," the man says. "We need to think carefully about how we _ought_  to think about this before we can actually start."  
  
Blaine smiles a little sadly, thanking the man for his time before he stands up and wanders off. He's been here long enough to know that this place makes people not exactly stupid, but simple. They don't think ahead very well. If this man can't even think carefully enough to decide how to start to come up with ideas, he'll never think clearly enough to do anything.  
  
Blaine feels like crying, because he knows it's no use trying to get help from anyone else, either. It seems like this is a place for people who have no more work and maybe don't even know how to do things anymore. This is the perfect place for them, and they're all so happy to just sit and be peaceful and slow, but Blaine feels stifled and hemmed in when he tries to join them. It goes beyond missing Kurt, he just isn't ready to be still, can always feel some unseen force pushing or pulling at him, urging him to action. Deep down, Blaine knows he still has things to do, and that he'll have to leave Kurt's country altogether before they can begin to happen. If no one here can help him, he'll have to come up with something on his own.  
  
It takes a while longer in the slow, sleepy environment before he realizes that maybe he doesn't need anything to carry him across the water, when he could just swim through it. He paces back and forth on the bank for a few minutes, trying to decide where the water looks deepest, before finally giving up. He's not sure why, but he's certain the water will be able to accommodate him no matter how shallow it is. He'll be able to change to fit the banks the same way the water can. Blaine takes a deep breath, wishes as hard as he knows how, and dives in.  
  
Blaine likes to be in the water and always has. His mom would say he's more animated in water than anywhere else, but he's never had anything like this happen to him before. As soon as his ears are covered by the water, words and sounds and voices and music burst into life and press in on him from all sides. It's like the water is telling him secrets, more than he can even begin to take in, all insistently clamouring for his attention. They tell him that someone has died, but he can't quite catch who or where or even when that person is. He is told that someone else has been born or will be born, and that someone else has become a mother. He can hear the voices of people who are crying because they think they're alone, and he hears laughter now and again, too. Underneath it all is a song, music that Blaine has never heard before. He can make out words, but he doesn't seem to know the language. He thinks if he listened hard enough he might know what it's saying anyhow.  
  
It's all so overwhelming that Blaine forgets to come up for air as he lets the current rush him along its path, but finally after several minutes, he realizes with a start that he doesn't need it. Blaine isn't sure if this water is special somehow, or if  _he's_  special while he's in it, but whatever the reason, his lungs don't ache and he stays under for a very long time. He only bothers to come back up to the surface when the current slows and becomes sluggish as the river finds its way into wide and open waters.  
  
When he kicks up to the open air again it's winter as far as the eye can see, and he can't catch so much as a glimpse of Kurt's country. A brief thrill of panic shoots down his spine when he wonders what will happen to him in such a cold place if he's lost and all alone, but then he notices the boulder of ice and Kurt's stooped back a good distance behind him. He quickly pulls himself onto solid ground, which he supposes is really an ice flow, and calls out before rushing over. The cold reaches out and grabs him as soon as he leaves the water.  
  
Kurt doesn't respond at first, but after Blaine comes around to face him and sets a hand on his shoulder excitedly, he blinks and then shakes his head slightly like he's waking up. Blaine is expecting to have to introduce himself all over again now that he's gotten so much bigger, but Kurt just smiles at him and says,  
  
"I didn't think you'd come back."  
  
"I told you I would," Blaine says, hopping on one foot and then another, trying to get the feeling back into his toes. "I missed you."  
  
"And I missed you," Kurt says. He still seems so tired and weak, but Blaine is certain he's never seen his friend look as happy as he does right now.  
  
"I didn't know how to get out again once I was inside," Blaine says, apologetically. "Or else I would have been here sooner."  
  
"You got older," Kurt comments, and like Rachel he sounds like he doesn't know what to make of it. "Most people who find a way back to the outside don't get older."  
  
"Most people don't get older  _inside_ , either," Blaine says. "They pick an age they want to be and keep it all the time."  
  
His teeth are chattering and his lips are going numb now. He wishes he could crawl into the feathers or fabric at Kurt's back like he always used to, but he's so much bigger now, and he has a feeling it wouldn't work this close to Kurt's country anyhow. If he tried he might just end up back where he started, right close to Kurt and somehow locked away from him at the same time.  
  
"I'd ask you to tell me more," Kurt says, a little amused. "But you don't seem to be in the mood for very much talking right now."  
  
"I don't understand," Blaine shivers. "It was all fine until a few minutes ago."  
  
"What changed?"  
  
"I left the water?" Blaine says, not sure if that's the right answer or not.  
  
"Maybe you should go back in," Kurt suggests.  
  
Blaine wants to argue, because he didn't leave Kurt's country to go swimming – he came to talk to Kurt. But then he feels a steady, no-nonsense wind come and push at him, making him stagger back a few feet as he tries to escape it, because it's even colder on his face when he's standing on an island made of ice. As he struggles to keep his footing, he ends up splashing into the water, stopping before it gets much deeper than his ankles. The coldness drains out of his body almost immediately, and he finds that he can distantly hear the music and voices again, much fainter than they had been while he was completely submerged.  
  
He almost starts to question what's happening to him in this place, but then Kurt hesitantly asks him what it's like in his country, and it makes Blaine so sad to think about how Kurt is always locked out of his real home, forced to fly around the world without ever stopping, that he forgets all about himself and sets to telling Kurt everything he can in painstaking detail.  
  
***  
  
He never goes back into the country. He never wants to, not after going such a long time without Kurt. They talk about everything in the endless amount of time that passes between them. They talk about Blaine's family, and how Kurt feels about the other winds, until Blaine reaches the conclusion that for Kurt the three winds are just like a sort of family, too. He feels better knowing Kurt isn't as alone as he first thought. The more Kurt talks the more Blaine feels like he knows them, like he's always known them, far better than he knows his own parents and brother. Sometimes he even knows things about how the winds work without Kurt telling him, like which part of the world each one likes to visit the most when they go flying, and that far away, so far that a person has to travel through space and sky without air to find them, there are other winds like the four here, who fly around planets of their own.  
  
"Most of them aren't as lucky as we are though," Kurt says.  
  
"Why are you better?" Blaine asks, curiously. He doesn't doubt that Kurt is telling the truth, but he doesn't know how Kurt has figured this out.  
  
"We have water," Kurt shrugs. "Not a lot of places have that, but it's very important. Without water the wind would have the wrong kind of air, and then the planet would be empty. You need both parts before anything grows."  
  
"You need more than just those things, though," Blaine insists, because nothing is ever that simple.  
  
"Maybe," Kurt says. "But I think water is the most important."  
  
Blaine certainly can't deny that the water is nice. He hasn't left it once since Kurt urged him to stand in it to stay warm. Blaine can't begin to understand why the water is so helpful for him, because he knows from things his teacher told him in school, and from stories people told him in Kurt's own country, that cold water doesn't keep you warm, it makes you die faster. But for Blaine it feels like being wrapped up in a warm, welcoming blanket. Sometimes he lets himself go far into the water and float away from Kurt, leaning his head back and letting the music rush into him as he sinks under. He's never felt like he belongs anywhere more than in the water. Kurt frowns like he wants to talk about it when Blaine mentions it, but he never does. Blaine knows it's because the music is telling Kurt to wait. He can hear it now, too.  
  
***  
  
The more time that passes, the better Blaine gets at understanding the songs. Sometimes when Kurt has to leave him to go help more people find his country, or to clean up a different part of the world, Blaine dives under the water and listens for hours, waiting for the next piece of the music to fall into a place where he can understand it. He knows now that the music is everywhere, but that most people can't hear it. It takes a while for him to realize that if he  _can_  hear it, it might mean he's more than just different. It might mean that he's not a real person at all.  
  
"Of course you're real," Kurt snaps, sounding a little more agitated than usual, because he's just gotten back after being gone a very long time, and it's always hard for him to settle back in. "You have a family, don't you? You love them, don't you?"  
  
"There's a family," Blaine says, worriedly. "And I must love them, but I don't think they're  _mine_. I don't know what I'm doing with them."  
  
"I think you got lost," Kurt says. He sounds sad as he says it. "I think you were missing for a very long time, and if you hadn't somehow found that family, you might never have come back."  
  
"But I'm not back yet," Blaine says, and he's not sure if this is something the song has told him or if it's something he just knows. "I can feel where home is now, but I can't get there all the way. Why not?"  
  
"I don't know," Kurt says. "Keep listening to the singing, Blaine. One day you'll hear the answer."  
  
Blaine tries to listen for the answer, he really does. But sometimes it's hard to stop from listening to what comes to him in the water besides the music. He hears voices and laughter and crying, and so much  _life_  swirling around him. It makes him happy in a way he doesn't know if he can explain, to know that the world can hold so much spark. Blaine feels more and more disconnected from humanity with each passing minute, but he loves feeling it crowd in around him, too. Until the day he recognizes one of the voices crying.  
  
Kurt has gone far away, and Blaine is waiting patiently, trying to listen to the music when he's distracted by a voice he knows almost as well as Kurt's, choked and unsteady, pleading with someone to,  
  
"Just hold on, baby. Just fight a little harder."  
  
The words come with the smallest spike of pain, and the faintest pressure on his wrist, like someone is gently rubbing it between their hands. He listens a little more carefully, and strange beeping and humming noises start to accompany the pleading voice. Soon his father's and brother's voices join his mother's. His parents talk to each other about things like "hard decisions" and if there's ever a good time to "let go." Cooper only ever says, "Please" and "Blaine." They all sound so scared.  
  
Kurt is smiling at him in resignation when he finally gets back.  
  
"I have to go back," is the only thing Blaine can say. Kurt nods.  
  
"How did you know?" Blaine asks.  
  
"The song changed," Kurt says.   
  
"I'm not ready to stay," Blaine says, and it hurts, because he wants to be ready.  
  
"I know," Kurt says. "You still don't fit. You can't right now. Do you remember the first night we went flying together, and the man we saw who wanted to run away to a new life?"  
  
Blaine nods, answering, "You said it's wrong to leave a place where people need you."  
  
"Well, people still need you in the place where you came from," Kurt says. "They're not ready to let you go yet, and you'll never belong anywhere until they are."  
  
"I've been away for so long," Blaine says, worry seizing him at the thought of seeing them all again. "What if they won't recognize me?"  
  
"They won't see the change," Kurt promises. "They only think you've just left. To everyone there, you'll be the same Blaine you always were."  
  
"How do I get back?" Blaine asks.  
  
"I'll take you," Kurt assures him. "But we'll have to walk the first part of the way, until I'm strong enough to carry you."  
  
They start out almost at once. It's cold out of the water, and Blaine wants to go back more than almost anything, but he knows that things will work out for the best if he keeps moving forward. Kurt takes his hand and they make fast progress, seeming to cover entire miles with each stride. Blaine can feel his own body grow smaller every step, and weakness overtakes him even as Kurt gets stronger. Before long he's stumbling and just wants to close his eyes and sleep, for the first time in what feels like years. The last thing he remembers is strong arms lifting him up and holding him close as his head gets heavier and heavier.  
  
***  
  
Waking up is hard and he thinks he's crying a little when he finally opens his eyes, looking up into the face of an unfamiliar doctor, who is frowning over him and saying something that Blaine can't quite make out. His head aches and his heart does, too. He looks down at his arms, which somehow seem even smaller than they did before the night he got sick. He's uncomfortably aware of his tired aching body, and how trapped he feels inside of it. Nothing is right and everything is wrong. He can't see Kurt anywhere.  
  
He's distracted soon enough by the sight of his mom and dad rushing to his side, crying and looking so relieved and happy. Seeing them smile through their tears makes him feel a little better. He still misses Kurt, but he starts to remember why it was important to find his way back here, at least for a little while. The lady doctor keeps talking at him, but all Blaine can hear is buzzing and very faintly, far, far behind that, just a hint of the old music, playing softly. His mother's voice doesn't sound right either, and Blaine wonders if everyone always sounded this fuzzy and he's just forgotten, or if he's forgotten how to understand English, but then his dad says,  
  
"Blaine, buddy, can you answer the doctor's questions?"  
  
Blaine starts in surprise. The sound is still muffled, but only slightly. It's almost exactly the way he remembered it. How can he have forgotten how to listen to some voices and not others? The realization dawns on him slowly, and he carefully fixes his gaze on the doctor as he tells her,  
  
"I can't hear you. Your voice keeps echoing until nothing makes sense. What happened to my ears?"  
  
It takes a while to sort everything out, especially because everyone in the room seems to find something about Blaine off-putting whenever he talks, like he's not normal, and it's even more recognizable than it had been before he'd gotten sick.  
  
"You're a very articulate young man," the doctor finally says at one point, speaking much louder so Blaine can sort out the words from the jumble of noises that accompany it.  
  
"He wasn't this articulate ten days ago," his dad says it softly, but Blaine can still hear it, because it's his dad and for some reason Blaine hasn't lost his father's voice.  
  
"What happened ten days ago?" he asks.  
  
"You got sick and we had to bring you here," his mom says.  
  
"Only ten days?" Blaine is shocked. "How could all of that have happened in ten days?"  
  
He's beginning to realize why his carefully thought out answers to all the questions being asked of him are strange to hear coming from someone who's supposed to be so young, but he doesn't know how to stop being who he is. Blaine has never been good at pretending he fits. He doesn't worry about any of this for too long, however, because he's so tired he can hardly stay awake long enough for the doctor to check his ears, tapping a strange fork with two prongs against her hand and holding it to his head, waiting for a reaction. He drifts back into exhausted sleep listening to his father talking about hearing loss to a person Blaine can't understand, a one-sided conversation with two people talking.


	6. Chapter 6

There are a lot of things for Blaine to get used to now that he's back with his family again. The hardest part is what's happened to his hearing. Fortunately, the fever didn't leave him entirely deaf, but tests soon make it clear that the nerve damage will never heal, either. He's lost what seems like an alarming amount of hearing, and the process of finding hearing aids that restore enough of it to let him communicate with his mother and in crowds is long and unpleasant. In the end, they never  _do_  find anything that lets him fully hear music again.  
  
At first Blaine is crushed by this realization, because he loves music and he loves singing, but it gets better after the night Kurt finds him listening to the radio and crying, because everything sounds so strange and ugly.  
  
"You can still hear music whenever you want," he promises, sitting next to Blaine on the bed and hugging him gently. "You just have to sit quietly and remember what it used to be like. And it's not like you can't hear the music that _matters_."  
  
It's true. The music that would wash over Blaine in the waves when he was at the top of the world with Kurt still sits in his ears even back here, like it's found a safe place to hide away inside of him, knowing it can't be crowded out by any other distracting songs. In the end, Blaine supposes that it's better to always have actual living music in his head than it is to have something that someone recorded and sold as a part of their job. But there are still other things that Blaine has to get used to, and even though nothing hurts as bad as the deafness, they aren't very fun, either.  
  
"Why can't I go out with you tonight?" He asks, more than a little petulantly, one night months after he's been sent home from the hospital. Kurt comes to see him almost every night to talk, and sometimes even during the day, but he's only taken Blaine with him on another trip once.  
  
"Because it's hard for you now," Kurt says, the same words he's said so many times before. "You get tired and it's not good for you. You can come the next time you're doing really well and I'm doing something quiet, but you need to take care of yourself, Blaine."  
  
"I can take care of myself just fine," Blaine mutters, a little sullenly. He can't help it if he's not as strong as he used to be.  
  
Kurt only laughs, and it would make Blaine angrier if he didn't love Kurt's laugh as much as he does. Kurt's voice is the only high sound Blaine can hear without any trouble now. His laugh is the only new music Blaine can listen to.   
  
"Blaine," Kurt says, fondly. "Sometimes they have to let you go home to take a nap after recess if you and Tina decide to play tag. You can't pretend it doesn't happen, I've seen you. You need to learn to take everything a little slower now that you're back in this body again."  
  
"It's not my fault I was sick," Blaine protests. "Why do I get in trouble for it?"  
  
"Because in this world the logical thing happens, not the thing that you deserve," Kurt says, with just the tiniest trace of sympathy mixed in with his amusement. It's a little frustrating, but if Blaine wanted sympathy he would be talking to Tina right now.  
  
Tina is much, much younger than Blaine remembers. Having grown so much outside of his body and apart from people while he was gone makes Blaine nervous about his friendship with her at first. He's scared that they might not have anything to talk about anymore, or that his going deaf might mean that Tina might not want him around, but thankfully he was worried about nothing. If anything, now that he's back, Tina is an even better friend than she was before. She's so real and human and everything that Blaine likes most about people, he wants to be around her even more than before. She's funny and happy and all she wants is for someone to notice her and tell her how wonderful she truly is, although Blaine knows she would never come straight out and ask for it. He's more than happy to give her all the attention she craves, and in return she adores him.  
  
"I'm so glad you didn't die," she tells him one day, hugging him tightly and sobbing into his shoulder, because Tina cries when she feels things that are too big for her to explain. "I was so scared you would go away and never come back, and you're the best friend anyone could ever have. I love you even more than I love your stories."  
  
Blaine considers this the highest compliment when it comes from Tina, because Tina  _loves_  his stories. He's told her all about the country at Kurt's back, as a part of their continuous discussions about their secret and unseen friends. As months fall away to become years, Tina eventually stops talking about the second Tina, until she seems to forget that she ever created her, but she always wants to hear all there is to be told about Kurt and where he comes from.  
  
"I wish I could think of amazing stories like you can," she says to him, her eyes shining. Of course, none of the things Blaine tells her are things that he's imagined, but he also knows it's pointless to try to correct her. People only ever understand Blaine as far as they're comfortable understanding him. For Tina, she is comfortable with Blaine as a boy her age with a big imagination. He never pushes her to see him as more, because he wants her to be happy.  
  
The only person who seems to be alright with the idea that Blaine has outgrown himself and isn't quite as human as he seems is Cooper, which surprises Blaine. He loves his brother very much, but he never thought he was especially observant when it comes to how people work. Cooper is wonderful and friendly and fun to be around, but he also thinks people are all transparent and easily read. For years he's gotten into trouble at school for thinking teachers "didn't really mean" what they tell him. His parents have a standing threat to ground him if he uses a lack of pointing as an excuse for disobeying. Still, when it comes to Blaine, Cooper approaches everything differently, especially after the hospital.  
  
"Sometimes I think your fever lasted a lot longer for you than it did for us," he tells Blaine one day.  
  
"I think you're right," Blaine says, because he's not sure how much he can say to Cooper without anyone getting upset.  
  
But then Cooper starts to talk to Blaine about the little things he notices more often, and the things he says are all the things that Blaine knows are true. "It's like you're older than I am sometimes," or, "I don't think you belong in this family at all."  
  
Their father overhears the last one and Cooper has to apologize and is grounded for a week. Blaine sneaks into Cooper's bedroom after supper to tell him it's alright and he's not mad.  
  
"I'm not a part of this family," he says. "I never have been, but I'm very glad I'm here."  
  
Cooper smiles at him, relieved.  
  
"I wasn't trying to be mean," he says. "I'm glad you're here, too. But you're not like us. You're not like anyone. That's the best thing about you."  
  
Even though Cooper seems to know on some level that he's not the older brother at all, it doesn't stop him from being fiercely protective of Blaine, either. He lurks around every corner when Blaine first goes to school with his hearing aids, quietly daring anyone who looks at Blaine strangely to give him a reason to push them around. He's not even in the same school as Blaine, so he almost certainly has to skip some classes to do it, but Cooper doesn't seem to care, no matter how much trouble he gets into.  
  
"Someone has to look after him," he mutters when their mom suggests that Cooper go play with some of his own friends instead of shadowing Blaine everywhere. "He doesn't remember to do it on his own."  
  
It's during one of the days that Cooper has decided Blaine doesn't take enough care of himself that he first hears one of Blaine's stories about Kurt and his country, while Tina is over for the afternoon. He listens intently, with a strange look on his face, like he's a little concerned, even more puzzled, and especially like he's trying to remember something from a long time ago. It happens the next time he's around and Blaine is telling Tina stories, too. Finally one day he pulls Blaine aside and asks,  
  
"Why don't you ever talk to me about Kurt?"  
  
"I didn't know if you wanted to listen," Blaine says, carefully.  
  
"You're my brother," Cooper says. "I want to know all the stories in your head."  
  
Cooper calls them stories just like Tina does, but the way Cooper stares at Blaine when he tells them, and the way he sometimes will mention a detail from one of them like he's talking about something from one of his textbooks, makes Blaine certain that Cooper knows on some level that what Blaine is talking about is real. Blaine can tell the idea scares Cooper if he thinks about it for too long, and one time he says,   
  
"I don't like to think about you living so long out of normal time. If you don't have to follow our rules, you could disappear at any time and I wouldn't be able to stop you."  
  
"Everyone dies some time, Cooper," Blaine says, because he can say things like that to Cooper without getting a strange look, like it's wrong for someone who is currently only supposed to be eight to be thinking them.  
  
"People die," Cooper agrees. "But it's different with you. I don't feel like you're ever going to die some days. It's going to be like you walk out the door and never come back. I don't want you to forget me."  
  
Blaine tries to make Cooper feel better after that by focusing on stories that don't have to do with how long he's lived outside of his body, and are more about how much he  _didn't_  forget about his family when he was with Kurt.  
  
"You don't forget loving someone," he says. "And it's even harder to forget someone loving  _you_. It rearranges who you are on the inside and changes things around. Even though I don't belong with any of you, you found me and held on when I was nothing. That's not something that ever stops changing you, even after you've left."   
  
For a long time, Blaine never meets anyone else who he feels like he loves like his family and Tina, and he's okay with that. He knows that teachers get worried when he forgets he's in such a young body and uses a word someone in primary school would never know, or when he corrects them on something in history class because he's heard the actual person they're learning about tell him the story. The other students just think he's weird and tend to steer clear of him. Either way, ultimately most people try to avoid him.  
  
It gets better when he finally goes to middle school. When he becomes a teenager, he still doesn't fit in, but it's easier to just shrug and write him off as a smart kid who's hormones are making him act strangely, which they do. Blaine never expected that he would start to act or think like a teenager at all as he got older, and evidently neither did Kurt, because they're both surprised when he starts blushing and tripping over his words when Kurt is over, the year he starts high school. He's always thought Kurt was the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, but now when he looks at him, something unfamiliar pulls at him, making him want to reach out and touch, to see what Kurt really feels like when their skin touches. It's incredibly frustrating and confusing, because he doesn't feel like he loves Kurt any differently than he did a year ago, and he can't tell what's changed. Something  _has_  changed though, that much is obvious the first time Kurt comes to visit while Blaine's been daydreaming and they're both shocked to find him stark naked.  
  
"What are you doing?" Blaine hisses, trying not to stare.  
  
"What are  _you_  doing?" Kurt demands, equally indignant. He has wings again, for the first time since they came back from his country, but they do nothing to hide the parts of him that Blaine feels incredibly awkward about seeing. "I always look the way you want me to, so that makes this  _your_  idea. What exactly were you thinking about?"  
  
"I don't want to talk about it," Blaine mutters, quickly, because what he was thinking about might not be a proper thing to say to the North Wind, no matter how good a friend he is.  
  
"What's gotten into you lately?" Kurt asks, sounding a little frustrated and a lot more amused. Blaine just shakes his head miserably.  
  
"I've been a teenager before," he says, and his face feels like it's on fire. "When I was with you at the top of the world. I don't know why it all feels so different this time."  
  
"You've never been a teenager," Kurt tells him bluntly, as he darts out the window to sit on the roof. Blaine can see his one leg dangling down in front of him. "You're not even one right now. You  _are_  acting like one though. Maybe it's from being trapped inside that body."  
  
"I hate this," Blaine says, because he's certain that however old he might be, he's never felt as human as he does right now, and it's as stifling and uncomfortable as it is exciting and terrifying.  
  
"You might feel better if you stopped thinking about me naked," Kurt suggests. "I mean, I certainly don't mind if you'd like to carry on like this – clothes are entirely too human for me to bother with when there are none of them around, but – "  
  
"I'm not thinking about you naked," Blaine insists, feeling his face go even redder.  
  
"It's sort of obvious from where I'm sitting that you are," Kurt says, actually laughing now. Blaine shuts the window in mortification and spends the next hour on the phone with Cooper, who has now moved out to go to college, complaining about the baser aspects of human nature until his brother suggests using a sock in exasperation, and Blaine hangs up in a panic, remembering that this is all still  _intensely_  embarrassing.

 

Thankfully, things seem to have evened out by the time freshman year is over. He can talk to Kurt face-to-face again without feeling like he's going to throw up, and he's more or less gone back to being the quiet, happy kid with the hearing aids who manages to avoid slushie attacks despite his lack of popularity. Tina insists that it's because the first time he got hit, a hearing aid shorted out, which awoke the mothering instinct of the terrifying cheerleading coach. Now anyone who touches a hair on Blaine's head gets a one-way ticket to expulsion.   
  
"I saw her with a lady at the mall one weekend," she says. "I don't know who she was, but she had Downs and Coach Sylvester was helping her adjust a hearing aid. She was looking at the lady the same way she looks at you when people laugh about how you can't hear what people are saying in a crowd. Like she's going to destroy anyone who makes things any harder for you."  
  
Blaine would like to say that Coach Sylvester is just a secretly nice person who doesn't like to see anyone suffer, but they've both watched her laugh when Artie Abrams got a stick pushed through the spokes of his wheelchair, so he supposes that Tina's right. After that happened, Blaine makes an effort to spend more time with Artie, hoping that some of the protection he gets will be extended to him, because Artie's a nice guy, and even though he sometimes stares at Blaine like he's talking a made-up language, he's really nice and seems to enjoy hanging out with him and Tina. He's a good addition for the group, and especially good for Tina, since he likes to do so many new things, he starts to push her to be a little braver just so she can keep up.   
  
Artie is the one who tells them about the auditions for the newly re-made glee club. Blaine assumes right away that Tina will join Artie and audition. She loves singing and is always singing a new song she's just heard for Blaine when they're alone together. Blaine thinks Tina has a beautiful voice, but she always just laughs at him, not unkindly, and asks how he can tell.  
  
"You ears are tricking you," she insists. But for as much as she pretends she's no good, Blaine knows how much she loves it, and that she had lessons for years, until her instructor got mad at her one day for not warming up properly before she practised. Tina had run to Blaine's house in tears, vowing to never take lessons again, but she still sang, and Blaine is surprised when she tells him she's not going to audition.  
  
"What if they don't like me?" she frets, wringing her hands together. "What if I mess up and forget the words, or get so nervous I start to stutter and can't stop, or what if Mr. Schuester hates my voice? I've never had him before for any classes, I don't know what he's like."  
  
"He's alright," Blaine offers. "He doesn't pay much attention to what we do in class, but he's always excited when we learn something and remember it later."  
  
"What if I can't learn?" She asks, her voice shaking. "What if I'm already as good as I'll ever be?"  
  
"You should audition with her," is Kurt's suggestion that night. "If she's so scared about sounding bad."  
  
"If she sounds bad, I sound worse than terrible," Blaine points out. "Even you say that sound like a cat being thrown into a lake when I try to sing new songs."  
  
Kurt smiles a little, like he's still pleased he came up with that description, but he also says,  
  
"That's my point. If she's scared she'll sound bad, she should audition with someone who's not afraid of sounding much worse. She'll feel much better about it, and you love helping people. This is a good way to do it."  
  
Blaine mentions the idea to Tina the next day, although he doesn't say where it came from, because she always looks at him strangely when he talks about Kurt like he's anything more than a nice story. But even though she doesn't believe he's real, she likes his idea just fine, and soon Blaine talks her into walking up and putting her name on the signup sheet with trembling hands.  
  
She auditions with "I Kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry, and Blaine laughs a little when he see's Mr. Schue start a little at the powerful, aggressive performance. He's a little surprised himself. He's always known Tina likes to pretend she's more than just a scared shy girl who doesn't know what to do with a lot of attention, but he didn't know she would be so convincing as soon as she got onto a stage. Mr. Schuester is smiling widely by the time that she's finished, and Blaine thinks it's a very good sign.  
  
He's a little more reserved when he sees Blaine walk onto the stage after, and Blaine doesn't blame him. He's seen Blaine after school many times whenever he assigns small group work, because he needs to know if he's missed anything important in the confusion. He knows that hearing things properly isn't something Blaine's capable of. Blaine smiles a little apologetically and says,  
  
"I know I'm not what you need to win in competitions, but I love music and I have a good sense of rhythm. If I get in, I promise I'll contribute by finding more members instead of singing solos."  
  
He's not lying. He might be doing this for Tina's sake, but now that he's here, watching how dejected Mr. Schue looks after only seeing two other people come in to try out, he wants to help out in any way he can. He sings "Good Morning" from  _Singin' in the Rain_  and by the time he's finished, it's impossible to ignore the way his teacher is politely cringing at the cacophony.  
  
"Well, you  _do_  have good timing," Mr. Schuester says, obviously trying hard to find something nice to say. "And if we don't have enough members we can't compete or qualify as an official club, so I  _have_  instituted an open audition policy. But..."  
  
He trails off a little helplessly, and Blaine can see him wrestling with how to make this glee club work with a shy girl who looks like she wants to run every time someone looks twice at her, a great singer who can't use his legs, and a terrible singer who can.  
  
"It's okay, Mr. Schue," he says, reassuringly. "I'll make it up to you by bringing in some people who will help you win."  
  
***  
  
Blaine knows Mr. Schuester doesn't think Blaine will be able to get anyone to join the club. After all, he doesn't have a lot of pull with anyone other than Tina at McKinley High. His ears make a lot of the students feel awkward and they don't like having to slow down when they talk before he can understand. It's not that Blaine is especially disliked, but he's a nuisance. Still, he does know a few people who don't mind him, and he also knows the Glee club will only survive if it's popular, which is why he stays late one night after their first, lackluster meeting to talk to some of the cheerleaders.  
  
Blaine has known Quinn Fabray since his time in the hospital. When he was well enough to be moved onto the pediatrics floor, Quinn had been there too. She was a year older than him and sitting up straight in her bed like a little princess, staring hard at a book like she was reading, even though Blaine never saw her eyes move across the page and quickly decided that she was just trying to look like she wasn't waiting for someone she knew to walk through the door. Her leg was raised up into the air in a sling and covered in a big pink cast. She always looked miserable, and scared, and lonely, so Blaine had started talking to her.  
  
At first she just stared at him like he was disgusting and not worth her time, but then one day when he couldn't adjust his hearing aids properly no matter how hard he tried and everything was ringing and he just felt  _awful_ , she ordered him to come sit on her bed and cautiously reached up to his ears and gently fiddled with the controls until the shrieking in Blaine's head stopped.  
  
They started talking a lot after that. Blaine found out that she had hurt her ankle in gymnastics, and that her daddy was an important person with an important job so he couldn't come see her much, and that her mommy didn't like hospitals and didn't come to see her ever. For the week they shared a room they were inseparable, and even though they never had much to do with each other after, they would always smile and say hello when they passed one another at school. Now that they were in high school together, Quinn made sure none of her own powerful circle ever gave Blaine a hard time.   
  
When he walks up to her after Cheerios practise, she's talking angrily to Brittany Peirce and Santana Lopez, two other cheerleaders who Blaine doesn't know that well, but who he recognizes as good friends of Quinn. They're just who Blaine needs. It's hard to catch their attention at first, because the more important people seem to be, the harder it is to get them to look at you, and even in high school this is how things work. All three of them are in an intense discussion about finding Quinn an acceptable boyfriend who will give her the best chance at becoming prom queen. Blaine isn't sure why that's important, but they're so focused on their discussion that Blaine has to actually block Quinn's path before they see him.  
  
"Oh," she says, awkwardly shifting from one foot to another, smiling at him in a very strained way. "Hi Blaine. How are you?"  
  
"I'm fine," Blaine says. "How are you?"  
  
"Same," Quinn says, still awkward.  
  
"Quinn why are you talking to the boy with scary robot ears?" Brittany asks, glancing back and forth between them in her sleepy, inquisitive way.  
  
"They aren't scary robot ears," Quinn snaps, taking a step closer to Blaine. "How many times do I have to tell you?"  
  
"If they were robot ears he'd have an excuse for reading in that awful monotone," says Santana. "He's just defective, Britt."  
  
"Santana, just shut up," Quinn hisses. "What was it you wanted, Blaine?"  
  
"Mr. Schuester's re-starting the old glee club," Blaine says, not wasting any time.  
  
Quinn just smiles at him, like he's the sweetest, silliest boy in school. "Blaine, why would you think I'd be interested in joining a glee club? I have my reputation to worry about."  
  
"Actually, I wasn't going to ask  _you_ , although of course the invitation is open to everyone," Blaine says, a little guiltily. "The person I wanted to talk to was Brittany."  
  
Brittany's eyes get big, like no one's ever asked her about anything as if she were an actual person apart from the influence of Quinn and Santana. Blaine wonders if she likes knowing that people see her as more than her friends, but before she can say anything, Santana is stepping forward, literally standing between Blaine and Brittany. She's scowling so hard Blaine has to fight not to step back a little.  
  
"Look, Frodo Bushy Eyebrows of the Shire or whatever your name is," she says. "Just because you've got nothing to lose singing like an idiot in front of an entire school who has unlimited access to the slushie machine, you don't need to drag Brittany down with you."  
  
Blaine might not have good hearing anymore, but he still sees and notices just as well as he used to. He can see the fierce protectiveness that's sitting just beneath all the insults. He raises his hands placatingly.  
  
"I don't want anyone to get made fun of, I want to help. Glee club  _needs_  someone like Brittany."  
  
"Why me?" Brittany asks.  
  
"We had our first meeting earlier this week," Blaine explains. "Mr. Schue's choreography? It's not very good. I know I've seen Coach Sylvester yelling at you when you try to add new choreography to her routines, but I thought if you joined glee club, you'd actually be able to try it without getting into trouble."  
  
"How do you know she's any good?" Quinn asks, narrowing her eyes at him.  
  
"Sometimes she dances in the halls on the way to her classes," Blaine says. He always watches the people who seem to hear their own music wherever they go. It makes him feel less awkward knowing that even if the music isn't the same, he's not the only one who hears something. "You're  _amazing_ , Brittany. Our glee club doesn't stand a chance without you."  
  
Blaine is being transparently sycophantic; he's always been good at being persistent, but his subtlety can be so laughable he often doesn't even try. Still, Brittany doesn't seem to mind, and Blaine realizes he's not entirely certain if subtlety would even work on someone like Brittany anyhow.  
  
"Santana," she says, tugging excitedly on Santana's sleeve. "He knows I'm amazing and wants to let me choreograph!"  
  
"No," Santana shakes her head adamantly. "No way. No one is popular enough to survive joining a club with those losers, not even you." She looks at Blaine and sneers, "Go find someone else to trick into joining your misfit brigade, you little twerp. We're not interested."  
  
"We never do what I want," Brittany complains sadly as Santana starts hustling her away. Quinn remains behind, staring at Blaine with her arms across her chest.  
  
"Nice try," she says, "but going after the weakest link won't change anything. You'll never get us involved in your club."  
  
"It's not really anyone's club yet," Blaine corrects. "There's only three of us. If enough cool people joined it wouldn't take long before no one bothered to think about us at all. It's hard for a club to be lame when it's not really  _anything_."  
  
Quinn purses her lips tightly and stares at him for another long moment before she rolls her eyes at him fondly and says,  
  
"Go home, Blaine. I've got things to do."  
  
***  
  
Blaine wisely doesn't ask whose decision it was to go through with it, but by the time the next glee club practise rolls around, Mr. Schuester is beaming wildly as he introduces "three very talented new singers" to the group. A beaming Brittany prances into the room, followed by an equally wary Quinn and Santana. Tina lets out a terrified squeak and seems to try to blend in with her chair and Blaine pats her knee reassuringly. The Cheerios aren't so terrifying. He already knows how great Quinn can be when she's not worried about her image, and as much as even he isn't brave enough to think about making Santana angry, Blaine's seen the way Brittany leads her around the school, literally by her little finger. Blaine's seen Brittany tear up when she sees a teacher kill a fly, and anyone who can keep a girl like that happy can't be as angry as she looks.   
  
Whoever finally gave the final approval for glee club out of the three girls, Quinn is the one who wastes no time bringing New Directions up to her code of social acceptability. The first thing she tries to tackle is the name, which is less successful than Blaine thinks she was expecting.  
  
"I'm sorry, I just don't hear it," Mr. Schue says, shrugging helplessly.   
  
Quinn's perfect posture sags a little before she points to Artie and commands him to, "Say it. Say it right now and Mr. Schue, pay as much attention as you can."  
  
Artie is beet red as he dutifully repeats, "Ladies and gentlemen, we are the New Directions."  
  
"Great job, Artie!" Mr. Schue beams at him. "I just don't understand what you're not telling me, Quinn. New Directions is a strong name that shows all of Ohio what we're really about. Everything begins here, with the music we're making together. Our name isn't afraid to take a stand and say, 'Get ready, world. Here we come!'"  
  
Artie makes a strangled noise and rolls out into the hallway as fast as he can while Quinn heaves a sigh of frustration. Her other efforts to raise the level of glee go a lot closer to plan. It's two weeks and a fairly concentrated word-of-mouth campaign later when she drags the first of her victories into the choir room by the hand, fullback Noah Puckerman.  
  
"Puck owes me a very big favour," she says, shortly, like she says everything these days. "He's going to begin the very long process of making it up to me by joining glee club."  
  
"Whatever," Puck says, in a fairly futile attempt to look like he's his own person and not entirely under Quinn's command. "I've got nothing better to do on Tuesdays after class anyways."  
  
Things pick up speed after that and soon two other jocks, Matt and Mike, join their ranks as well. Matt and Santana join Tina and Artie as early standout voices, but both Tina and Matt are almost phobic of being the centre of attention. It's a long time before Mike finally suggests that if they choreograph the numbers a little differently, it could be staged so the audience is more drawn towards the group instead of a single singer.  
  
"You're too good at this to spend all your time humming in the background, man," he tells Matt, who smiles at him gratefully.  
  
Brittany is thrilled when Mike ends up being as big a fan of dancing as she is, although you'd never know it to look at him, and before long it becomes commonplace to see the two of them huddled up close to each other, whispering in the hallway as Santana looks on in disapproval. Blaine really wants to talk to her about it, but he's not certain if he wouldn't get hit for his efforts, especially because he's certain the person Santana is jealous of is Mike and not Brittany.  
  
"I don't understand these people sometimes," he tells Kurt, on one of the rare nights Kurt has decided Blaine can handle coming to keep him company as he works. Their hands are laced together tightly and if Blaine looks straight ahead instead of at his feet, he doesn't even notice that they're walking across rooftops, clearing entire streets in single strides. "She's so worried that she might like a girl, she has no idea what to do about it. She must spend so much time thinking there's something wrong with her. It's sad."  
  
"Do you think a girl liking another girl is wrong?" Kurt asks, curiously.  
  
"Of course not," Blaine says. "I like you, and  _you_  look like a boy and  _I_  look like a boy, but there's nothing wrong with it."  
  
"You just look like a boy?" Kurt sounds even more interested now.  
  
"I still don't know what I am," Blaine says after a moment. "I know what I look like and I know what you look like, but it doesn't seem as simple as that. Inside I feel like I might not be anything at all, or almost like I could change what I am or what you are whenever I need or want to. I don't know exactly how to explain it."  
  
"You mean you're fluid?" Kurt asks and it sounds like he's choking a little on his laughter. Blaine's not sure he appreciates that.  
  
"What if I am?" He demands. "What's wrong with saying that?"  
  
"Absolutely nothing," Kurt says, as he stops walking altogether to pull Blaine into an abrupt, unexpected hug. "Sometimes I'm sad at how much you don't remember, but sometimes you talk like this and I hear how much you still know, even if you don't understand anymore. It just makes me happy."  
  
***  
  
"If that asshole Schuester seriously thinks I won't beat his sorry ass just because he's a teacher, he's got a very unpleasant surprise headed his way. I won't be blackmailed. I  _won't_."  
  
"Calm down, Davina," is the immediate and unsympathetic response. "So Mr. Schuester planted weed in your locker to make you join the club. Big deal. Like you've got any room on the moral high ground? Last week you tried to toss Beethoven in a dumpster. You can't pick on deaf kids and act like you don't deserve a little blackmail every now and then."  
  
Blaine could point out several things right now. He could tell them that Beethoven was a composer not a singer. He could tell them that technically he's not deaf, he just deals with significant hearing loss. He could point out that he's actually in the choir room with Santana and glee's newest recruit Dave Karofsky right now, and maybe they might want to stop threatening the lives of teachers while there are witnesses. He stays silent and waits. Blaine is very good at waiting, almost as good as other people are at forgetting he's in the room.  
  
"I can't sing in a fucking show choir," Karofsky says, and he sounds defeated and tired. He also sounds scared.   
  
"Don't make it sound like we're lepers," Santana sounds slightly offended. "There are a lot of very popular jocks in the club now. We've worked very hard to rebrand this joke of a campfire sing-a-long, and I don't appreciate your slander."  
  
She sniffs and starts to file her nails imperiously. Dave sighs and lets his head fall into his hands, the angry tension in his body draining away to be replaced with a tired defeat.  
  
"I hate this so much," he almost whispers. "My life is just... my life is just  _way_  too confusing right now to deal with prancing around on a stage in front of my team members with a big stupid smile on my face while I sing show tunes from  _Mary fucking Poppins_  or whatever. I just don't need their stupid emasculating bullshit right now, and I don't care how popular this club is, there's no way it's not going to happen."  
  
"It  _is_  gay," Santana agrees, now filing her nails with a little more severity. "It's so gay just joining almost qualifies us for our own float in a pride parade."  
  
"You're so lucky you're a girl," Dave says. "You can actually go and make out with another girl and no one bothers to treat you any differently. If a girl's gay it's just hot. You get the option of taking it as a compliment."  
  
"Only when there's alcohol involved," Santana snarls, hissing as she pushes too hard on her nail and gouges into the nail bed when the file slips. The odd conversation comes to an end as Artie wheels into the room laughing about some movie with the club's other newest member Lauren, and both Dave and Santana act like it never even happened. Dave stays in the club, but his eyes never lose that nervous uncertainty, like he's waiting for someone to vocalize how much they dislike him, or how hard they're judging him. Blaine thinks about what it all means for a long time.  
  
***  
  
It's strange, but the thing that makes everything come to a head is when the club finds out that Quinn has gotten pregnant. It starts when Schue is giving them an admittedly heavy-handed lecture about how if everyone plays their cards right, high school will be the best years of their lives, and everyone should try to make the most of them. It has absolutely nothing to do with the sectionals competition that he's supposed to be working on the set list for. Lauren snorts at him derisively and pointedly ignores him, while everyone else around Blaine wears the same pained and vaguely stunned expressions they always wear when Mr. Schue is trying to teach a life lesson, but when he actually starts to point out individuals in the room, everything goes to hell.  
  
"Quinn, you are hands down the most popular girl in school, and you're extremely intelligent besides. You're not afraid to make the hard decisions, like dropping out of cheerleading when you felt Sue wasn't fully acknowledging your contributions, and all it's done is make you even more popular. When I look at you I see a girl who is going to go so far and do so many great things. It hurts to see you so worried about what people might think of you. Have more confidence in yourself, and it will shine through on the stage!"  
  
"Is that  _really_  what you think?" She says after a moment of stunned silence. "You want to know what the other kids in this school really see when they look at me? A walking target. I'm at the top of the food chain, and the  _only_  thing I get to count on is knowing that one day someone will come along to knock me out of it. Every morning I get up and wonder, who's going to knock me out of the running? Who's going to notice first? And then I start to think, why  _hasn't_  anyone noticed yet? Does anyone at this school actually  _see_  me?"  
  
"I don't think I –" Mr. Schue starts, but Quinn cuts him off.  
  
"I've gained  _15 pounds_  in one  _month_ ," she spits. "None of my clothes fit me and  _no one cares_. Where are the fat jokes? Why isn't anyone calling me a whale? Telling me I look pregnant? I don't understand why no one sees, and if I have to wait any longer for someone to just say it, I think I'll go crazy."  
  
Santana raises her hand and offers,  
  
"I've been starting a rumour that you're training for a pie-eating contest if that makes you feel any better. I thought about doing the pregnancy one, but then I realized you'd have to steal the keys to your chastity belt from your parent's Bible room before that would ever happen, so I thought the compulsive eating was more believable."  
  
Quinn's face crumbles a little and she tries to hold in a little shudder before she whimpers,  
  
"They're going to kill me for doing this to them."  
  
There's a heavy silence in the room, and then Tina ventures,  
  
"Quinn? You're not  _really_  pregnant, are you?"  
  
Quinn only sobs out, "I'm going to lose everything," and then the entire room seems to swarm around her, even Santana, reaching out to offer hugs or to stroke her hair. Only Puck hangs back with a guilty expression on his face that Blaine files away to think over later. For now he only worms his way next to Quinn and pulls her into a hug, letting her fall into his shoulder and lean against him. Everyone's talking all at once and he's having trouble hearing what they're all saying, so he just looks at her and says,  
  
"You won't lose us. No one here is ever going to leave you when you need us."  
  
Quinn smiles at him a little.  
  
"Big words from the guy with a bad heart."  
  
"What's wrong with Blaine's heart?" asks Artie, curiously.  
  
"It's going to quit on him," Quinn says softly, snuggling closer.  
  
"It's the same thing that almost made me deaf," he explains. He's never told any of them except for Quinn and Tina this before, but somehow it feels like now is as good a time as any to talk about it. If nothing, it will get the rest of the club to stop brainlessly staring at Quinn's stomach, and the more people there are talking about serious things, maybe the less alone she'll feel. "There's a muscle in my heart that doesn't work very well anymore. It's not a  _very_  big deal, at least not right now. It's not making me sick or anything."  
  
Tina rolls her eyes a little.  
  
"No," she says, a little shortly, because Tina has never liked to think about Blaine's heart. "It just might stop one day and be too tired to start again. Not a big deal at all."  
  
"That sucks, dude," Mike says, and he looks worried. "Should we be working so much on choreography with you?"  
  
"Exercise can be good for people with bad hearts," Blaine shrugs. "If it was a problem, I wouldn't do it."  
  
There's a long awkward pause in the room before Artie can't take it any longer and pipes up,  
  
"I don't remember what it feels like to walk anymore. I mean, I still remember walking, but I've been in this chair ever since I was eight. Sometimes I try to remember what my legs used to feel like when everything worked, and I can't do it."  
  
There's another very long pause and finally Santana speaks, staring straight at the floor and looking like she's going to be sick,  
  
"I have sex with guys because when I was ten my grandmother pointed to two women walking down the street holding hands and told me they were dykes and going to burn in hell. Then I got to middle school and if you didn't put out, that's what the boys called you. I don't think you're a bad person if you like girls, but everyone else does, so I pretend."  
  
Brittany leans over and links their pinkies together, smiling sadly. Karofsky fidgets nervously in his chair. No one else speaks. Finally Mr. Schue clears his throat and manages,  
  
"It's good that you feel safe enough here to talk about these things. Quinn? Do you maybe want to stay a little later so we can set up an appointment for you with Ms. Pillsbury? As for the rest of you, you know that if you  _ever_  want to talk, I'm here to listen, right?"  
  
Blaine raises his hand.  
  
"I'm not trying to be rude," he says, which is the truth, even though he knows that he probably will be anyway. "But if you tried to watch for when we need to talk, instead of just waiting to listen, it might work a little better for you."  
  
Mr. Schue's mouth opens and closes like a goldfish, and Blaine can feel Quinn's small smile pressing against his collarbone.  
  
***  
  
"You sound tired," is the first thing Cooper says when Blaine answers the phone.  
  
"I  _am_  tired," Blaine says. "We've been working hard to get ready for Nationals. There's a lot to get ready."  
  
Sometimes Blaine feels like he blinks and misses entire months of his life at a time. He remembers everything that happens between each blink but he only feels like he's really present for the moments when his eyes are all the way open. It's a common complaint that he's had ever since going away with Kurt, but it's been getting worse lately. He barely even registered beating Vocal Adrenaline at Regionals, even though Mr. Schue insists that Blaine was the one to give him the winning strategy of turning their competition's strength into their weakness. All Blaine had actually said, after a meeting that consisted entirely of watching old Vocal Adrenaline performances on YouTube, was that they didn't seem to think much of sharing their solos, and that "they make one person do all the work while everyone else dances around him." Mr. Schue took that to mean that their only hope of winning was to choose numbers that had an almost overwhelming amount of solos and group interaction.  
  
"This is a choir competition, not a solo competition," he'd said. "Let's show them we can work as a team!"  
  
Brittany and Mike created some of the cleverest choreography to go with the numbers that Blaine had ever seen, making it look like everyone was much more talented than they actually were, and by the time they performed their chaotic, feel-good, infectiously enthusiastic 80s medley at Regionals, not even "Bohemian Rhapsody" could manage to overshadow them. It's all so overwhelming that Blaine wonders if the hazy floating feeling that surrounds him is ever going to lift, or if he'll drown in all the activity that surrounds him these days at school, but eventually he rises to the surface like always, listening to Cooper's voice over the phone. Cooper always helps Blaine sort out who and where he is. He never tries to make Blaine feel like something he's not, or like he needs to fit in with the people around him.   
  
"You shouldn't be working so hard," Cooper insists. "Tell that teacher of yours that he needs to lay off. You can't take chances with your heart, Blaine."  
  
"I'm not," Blaine promises. "I saw the doctor last week. I'm still fine."  
  
He doesn't lie to Cooper exactly. The doctor  _did_  say he was fine, but something's changing, and Blaine can't quite decide what it is. It might be as simple as the fact that he hasn't seen Kurt in as long as a month, but while he thinks that's part of it, he's not convinced it's the entire reason he feels as restless and impatient as he does. In a strange way it feels like he might be getting ready to go somewhere. He doesn't say this to Cooper, though. There's no point in worrying him about anything until he knows for sure. Besides, Cooper will be home in a month, anyhow. He's sure that whatever is going to happen can wait until then.  
  
***  
  
Kurt waits until Blaine is ready to leave. Blaine appreciates it, but he's always known it would happen this way. Or at least he's known for a long time, ever since he started to fully understand the music, which has been getting steadily louder and louder in his ears over the past few days, until he has trouble hearing anything else at all. Tonight it's so loud he can't even sleep, so after he says goodnight to his family (he makes sure to tell them all that he loves them, which makes them smile, and thank you, which makes them look confused, but both need to be said), he lies down with his eyes wide open and waits for Kurt.   
  
"You haven't been around much lately," is the first thing he says when Kurt slips in through the open window.  
  
"I thought you might like some time to get everything in order," Kurt says. "You had to know this was coming. I wanted to give you time to say goodbye."  
  
"Thank you," Blaine says. "But I really don't like it when you're not here. I hope it doesn't happen again, no matter what the reason is."  
  
"We've been apart a lot longer," Kurt points out, and Blaine can only nod in agreement. He understands.  
  
"Do you have any questions before we leave? About what you are maybe?" Kurt asks, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet like an excited child. Blaine can tell that he doesn't want to waste any time, but he wants to be sure nothing important is missed, either.  
  
"I know what I am," Blaine says, and at Kurt's expectant look he elaborates, "I don't know how to say it the right way in these words, but I think that whatever you are to the north wind, I might be to the water."  
  
Kurt smiles encouragingly, so Blaine continues.  
  
"I understand that part, but I still don't understand why I left or how I got into this body or what any of this means."  
  
"There are stories," Kurt says slowly, "adventures that humans seem to create out of nothing and tell their children. You probably had a lot of them told to you."  
  
He looks at Blaine carefully, like he's trying to vocalize something he's never tried to vocalize before, although he's obviously thought about often.  
  
"Those stories are full of magic and incredible things and people who fall into trouble for no understandable reason, or for a reason that seems silly or simple when you say it out loud. People like to think they're just stories, but even nothing comes from somewhere, and sometimes what they call a fairy tale is only a small piece of something that they don't understand. You were always going to get lost and I was always going to find you. It's a part of what we are that goes deeper than what we're made of. It's who we have to be."  
  
Blaine is hopelessly confused and he must look it, so Kurt sags a little and tries again.   
  
"I think soon you'll understand better than I can explain," he says. "But you've always loved life, Blaine. For as long as I've known you, you see living things and you care. You want them to grow and you want them to thrive. No one else cares like you do. Not me or Finn or any of the other winds. It's what makes you special. But maybe one day you got a little too close while you were watching and decided to slip away so you could feel what it was like for yourself."  
  
 _Blaine thinks about how Cooper will come into the room once the sun's been up for a few hours, good-naturedly scolding Blaine for sleeping the whole day away. He wonders if Cooper will notice the difference in the air right away or if it will be like that morning when he first got sick. If he'll keep talking and talking, before finally coming over to the bed, frowning as he reaches out to touch Blaine's face, this time finding it cold instead of burning hot._  
  
"Why are you the one who came for me?" Blaine asks. "Why has it always been you instead of one of the other winds?"  
  
 _Blaine worries a little about his parents, who are going to be devastated. He supposes that when they ask the doctors, they'll be told it was his heart. In a way the doctors won't be wrong, because his heart feels so full right now, he doesn't think it could possibly hold out much longer. But they were always so scared that this would happen, that he would go away for good. He's told them that he loves them, that he'll always love them. He hopes that they'll realize that he meant it for forever, not for as long as he stays._  
  
Kurt smiles widely at Blaine.  
  
"I came because you're the beginning," Kurt says, sitting down next to him on the bed and leaning over slowly. "And I'm the end. We need each other."  
  
 _Deep inside of Blaine are memories of coaxing the world to life around him, but if it hadn't been for the people he's met in the past sixteen years, who have let him into their world, he would have never gotten to know what it was like to actually be alive. If he'd never been able to feel that spark of life, there would have been nothing real for him to hold onto and he might have drifted lost forever. Without these people he's not sure if he would have ever found Kurt. Blaine remembers how not long after that big talk in the choir room Brittany helpfully volunteered the glee club to sing at his funeral, and how Quinn had hidden her face in her hands, mortified. Now he hopes they go along with Brittany's suggestion, because his friends meant something to him when he was here.  
  
He thinks of all the games he used to play with Tina growing up, all the times one of their parents would drive them down to the community pool, where they'd play for hours, until their hands were all wrinkled. Mrs. Cohen-Chang would laugh at him and say Tina never played as much in the water before she met him.  
  
"You're turning my daughter into a fish."  
  
He wonders if Tina will look at water and think about when they were small, if she'll think about him before he got sick. He hopes she never forgets him, that none of his friends forget him, because he knows he'll never forget any of them. _  
  
Blaine smiles back at Kurt. The last thing he remembers thinking is that maybe all the fuss he's put everyone through is worth it, because without life he would never understand love the way he's understanding it right now. Even though it's strange that he would have to go so far away to find something that he's always had, whenever Kurt is with him. Maybe that's why he isn't afraid to go back. Then Kurt's lips are on his own, and he's kissing Blaine, and Blaine is kissing back and suddenly it feels as though Blaine is boneless, without form and suspended inside a perfect moment. The music is everywhere. He opens his eyes, finally awake after sleeping for over a hundred years, and Kurt is looking at him, holding out his hand, and waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Alternate link to Peachfaerie's art.](http://morph0fairy.deviantart.com/art/Where-Wind-and-Water-Meet-chpt-5-309526967)
> 
>  
> 
> Also, check out the lovely piece of fanart made by [Gabci from LiveJournal](http://gabach.deviantart.com/art/Where-Wind-and-Water-Meet-illustration-320979624)!


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